I PN 3373 
.B7 
Copy 1 




Class _P_Hs35b 

Book 3M 

Gopightl^? . 



COFVRIGHT DEPOBUX 



r 



HOW TO WRITE 
SHORT STORIES 



^HW 



L. JOSEPHINE BRIDGART 




1921 

The Writer's Digest 

Cincinnati 



. 3 'I 



Copyright^ 1921 
The Writer's Digest 



All Rights Reserved 



JAN 28 1922 
^.C1A655913 



CTO DR. GEORGE PHILIP KRAPP, 
■^ of Columbia University, and Leslie 
W. Quirk, whose firm hands helped me 
over tzvo stiles in my ozvn rather venture- 
some journeying, this book for the zvriters 
zvho are still studying the sign-posts is 
gratefully dedicated. 

L. JOSEPHINE BRIDGART. 



CONTENTS 



Chapter I. 
Common Sense in Viewing One's Work , 1 

Chapter II. 
The Necessary Mental Equipment 9 

Chapter III. 
Finding Time and Material 16 

Chapter IV. 
Hints for Equiping The Shop 27 

Chapter V. 
Common Business Sense in Meeting the Market. ... 35 

Chapter VI. 
The Great Art of Story Writing: Construction 48 

Chapter VII. 
The Great Art of Story W^riting : Style 57 

Chapter VIII. 
The Great Art of Story Writing: Adaption of Style 
to Material 63 

Chapter IX. 
The Great Art of Story Writing: The Element of 
Suspense — Viewpoint 68 

Chapter X. 
The Great Art of Story Writing: Characterization. 76 

^ Chapter XI. 
The Great Art of Story Writing : Plots 84 



Chapter XII. 
Using Acquaintance as Material 93 

Chapter XIII. 
The Author's Personal Responsibility 102 

Chapter XIV. 
The Editors 108 

Chapter XV. 
Criticism 118 

Chapter XVI. 
Help from Other Writers 126 

Chapter XVII. 
When You're Tempted to Shut Up Shop 131 

Chapter XVIII. 
The Business of Writing — A Summing Up 138 



FOREWORD 

npiHE great purpose of "How 
To Write Short Stories" is to 
induce the new writer to look at 
his profession in a business-hke 
way and to go to w^ork with his 
business sense fully awake. The 
book also seeks to answer some 
specific questions which usually rise 
up to vex the new writer and in 
general to make the technique of 
writing for publication more clear 
and simple. 

L. Josephine Bridgart. 



CHAPTER ONE^ 

Common Business Sense in Viewing 
One's Work_ 

WRITING for publication is a business. If 
the new writer will accept this fact he 
will have laid a foundation upon which, if he 
have the necessary natural ability, he can build 
success. 

If a young woman tells you that she intends 
to take up nursing, and later reveals that her chief 
reason for doing so is that the uniforms in a cer- 
tain hospital have attracted her, or that she en- 
joys reading to the sick, -or dislikes the business 
life her father has suggested for her, or has 
heard that nurses make a great deal of money, 
you immediately feel that her nursing will not 
be a great success. You reason that nursing 
involves some very hard and disagreeable duties., 
and that a girl who thinks only of the incidental 
pleasures or the monetary rewards is pretty sure 
to fail. It is not common business sense to enter 
a profession without taking into consideration 
the requirements of that profession. 

I have read this lack of common business sense 
between the lines of many a first story. Some 
of these stories tell how a young girl with no 
experience won a prize in a short story or novel 
contest ; often the prize-winning story was writ- 
ten in an afternoon, or an evening, or in the dead 
of night as the result of an idea which came to 



2 Hozv to Write Short Stories 

the author after she had retired. Some of these 
stories are about attractive young women who 
sold an editor a manuscript because she was at- 
tractive, or because she was poor, or because she 
was sick or saucy. Such stories show plainly that 
the authors are depending upon personal charm 
or "an inspiration" or luck rather than upon hard 
work to win acceptances. They do not stop 
to reason that before they can hope to sell 
a manuscript they must learn how to produce a 
manuscript that some editor will want to buy. 

One would naturally suppose that a person who 
intended to make a business of writing English 
would first see to it that his English was correct, 
pure, idiomatic, all that is meant by "good Eng- 
lish." As a matter of fact the necessity of reach- 
ing any standard, so far as his English goes, does 
not even occur to many an arrogant young writer. 
He may worry a little about construction and style 
and ask a few hurried questions about viewpoint 
and plot development, but the reviewing of his 
English grammar and rhetoric does not suggest 
itself to him. His manuscript may be so full of 
slang that a cultured English, Scotch or Irish 
reader could not follow it ; it may again and again 
lapse into foreign idioms or expressions that are 
markedly colloquial ; it may even not be correct 
grammatically; but if the sentences make sense 
(or almost sense) the writer is content. He is 
sure he can sell his "swell article" or "darn good 
yarn" if only he can find an editor not dazzled by 
the "big names." 

In letter after letter I have had writers confess 



Hoiv to Write Short Stories 3 

to me that they did not want to be bothered mas- 
tering the fundamental principles of the profes- 
sion they sought to enter. One man wrote me 
that his returned stories had been "accompanied 
by rejection slips with very few exceptions." 
"These exceptions," he explained, "have been 
advice to study grammar or style or something 
else equall}' obnoxious to my sense of application 
to dry things. I have been told that I have good 
ideas but rank clothing for those ideas." 

A woman wrote me, complaining that I spent 
a great deal of time in showing her where she had 
broken rules and in pointing out how she could 
make her story more nearly perfect technically. 
"Why," she inquired, "do you not tell us how to 
make our stories salable and then help us to attain 
perfection afterwards?" 

Story-writing and article-writing and poetry- 
writing are like dress-making and carpentry. 
They must follow certain rules if they are to at- 
tain perfect results or results that satisfy the 
money-spending public. Unless you follow the 
rules governing the construction of a table you 
connot produce a table that w^ill' attract the care- 
ful buyer. Unless you respect the principles gov- 
erning the construction of a story or an article 
or a poem you cannot produce a manuscript that 
the careful editor will consider worthy of a place 
in his magazine. In any other trade or profes- 
sion, I think, the beginner expects to encounter a 
great deal of hard work. He expects to master 
certain rules, learn to apply them and then make 
himself skillful by practice. Believe those of 



4 Hozv to Write Short Stories 

us who have tried it: Writing for publication 
means careful preparation and a great deal of 
hard work, just as millinery and surgery and 
sculpture do. 

In. her autobiography Ellen Terry tells of 
actresses who had explained to her that they did 
not^care to be hampered by rules. The success- 
ful actress had replied that is was w^ise to learn 
the rules before one decided to abandon them. 
"Before you can be eccentric," she commented 
pithily, "you must know where the circle is." 

It is not necessary to learn a great mass of rules 
in order to become a writer. It is necessary that 
each writer recognize the principles underlying 
the profession he seeks to enter. It is necessary 
that a writer should know how to turn out sen- 
tences that are grammatical, clear, free from 
crudities that would offend cultured readers. It is 
necessary that a writer of articles should know 
how to build up an article so that it will catch and 
hold the interest and leave the reader in no doubt 
as to what the author is "trying to say." It is 
necessary that a poem should satisfy the ear and 
the aesthetic taste of the reader to whom it seeks 
to appeal. It is necessary that a story should be 
so put together that it catches the interest at the 
outset, holds the mind alert and expectant until 
the climax is reached and ends with the reader 
more or less surprised and, intellectually at least, 
satisfied. 

The rules which so irritate the careless writer 
are the result, not of arbitrary decision on the 
part of some over-educated rhetorician or stylist, 



I 



Hozv to Write Short Stories 5 

but principles which have been deduced from a 
careful study of successful writing. If my neigh- 
bor has been to Philadelphia and found he can 
save time by taking the Pennsylvania Railroad, 
and I'm in a hurry, I should be very foolish if 
I took the D. L. & W. or a taxicab just because 
the D. L. & W. station pleased my fancy better 
than that of the P. R. R. or I liked to travel by 
myself. If my brother carpenter has proved 
that a table will stand firm only when it is sup- 
ported by four legs or what corresponds to four 
legs,, I'm not very wise in trying to balance mine 
on two or three or one just because I'm too lazy 
to find material for four or don't particularly en- 
joy constructing four-legged tables. 

The editor does not care at all about rules as 
.lies. He wants a manuscript that wall hold his 
readers' interest. If you can break the rules and 
still produce a manuscript that will grip the atten- 
tion from the first sentence to the last you need 
not fear that your irregularities will cause you 
a rejection. If your story is interesting in the 
middle, but dull at the beginning and end, or 
catches the attention easily but cannot hold it, 
or catches and holds it easily but loses it just at 
the last — it seems good sense to try and discover 
whether the breaking of some rule has not spoiled 
the whole effect. 

A thousand times I have been told that suc- 
cessful wa-iters allow their viewpoint to shift 
about in the short story, and I have been asked 
why it is that all the text-books on writing declare 
against the shifting viewpoint. I can only reply 



(i Ho7v to Write Short Stories 

that the successful writers who break rules suc- 
ceed, not because of their breaking rules, but be- 
cause their style or their characterization or their 
plot material is strong enough to offset whatever 
may be faulty in their work. And remember that 
a trained writer can do with impunity what the 
new writer can not. If you're travelling where 
you know every foot of the country you may 
strike across fields or take some by-path and 
reach home safely and promptly. If you are 
going over unfamiliar ground it's wise to keep 
to the road and watch the sign-posts. 

*'Oh, Iknow my English is bum," admits one 
eager young writer, "and I often get the tail of 
my story where the head ought to be, but I can't 
help it ! I think so fast I can't stop to watch my 
sentences as I go along, and I hate to rewrite a 
manuscript after it's all done. I'm going to have 
Prof. Smith revise all my stuff for me." 

When I was a young girl I learned how to ride 
a bicycle without learning how to mount. I could 
manage very well if anybody would get me 
started, but I couldn't start myself. This proved 
very inconvenient ; there was only one friend who 
was willing to bother with me, and when he 
wasn't at hand I had to stay home. After a 
while even this young man found attending to 
two wheels rather a burden. He bought a tandem 
and for several weeks I traveled far and happily. 
Then my friend and I quarreled and my bicycling 
came to an abrupt close. If you wish to write for 
publication learn all that is necessary to fit you 
for such work. The person upon whom you de- 



i 



Hozi' to Write Short Stories T 

pend for revision may quarrel with you or die or 
go out of business and you be left with some 
very promising but quite unsalable manuscripts 
on you hands. 

I had almost headed my chapter "The Lazy 
Young Writer," because I have been so impressed 
with the fact that a great many new writers hope 
to succeed by some other means than their own 
intelligent, conscientious effort. Not long ago a 
woman asked me to criticise a manuscript for 
her and added that if I knew how she had wept 
and prayed for success I would speak a few en- 
couraging words concerning her composition. T 
won't comment upon the lack of business sense 
in paying a person to tell you the truth and then 
trying to induce him to say more or less than the 
truth. I will say that a writer should be ashamed 
to pray for an acceptance until he has exerted all 
his natural and acquired powers to make his man- 
uscript worthy of acceptance. I have a fixed be- 
lief in prayer and I daily pray for guidance in 
my work and courage and patience in performing 
my task, but I spend far more time w^orking on 
my manuscripts and criticism than I do praving 
over them. 

A bright young electrician, employed in the 
Brooklyn Navy Yard, told me that his superior had 
once pointed out a careless error with the remark : 
"The good Lord gave us brains and the good 
Lord expects us to use them !" There is sturdy 
faith and good common sense rather than irrev- 
erence in this speech. The good Lord has given 
the ambitious young writer a certain amount of 



8 Hozv to Write Short Stories 

brain matter. With this He expects him to win 
his own success. 

If you are yearning to dehver some special mes- 
sage, if you feel within you the cry of thoughts 
worthy of expression, you are worse than lazy if 
you allow ignorance of the rules of writing or 
pure carelessness to make you fail or to defer 
success. Don't use your God-given imagination 
on dreams of remarkable and impossible achieve- 
ments in the realm of literature. Give up the 
idea of winning success by a single, brilliant 
effort. Hard work, guided by a knowledge of the 
principles of your profession, and a thoughtful 
study of the market will sell more manuscripts 
than any get-famous-quick scheme your fertile 
brain can possibly conceive. 



I 



CHAPTER TWO 
The Necessary Mental Equipment 

N my first chapter I spoke of the necessity of 
every writer's understanding the principles 
underlying the work of authorship. I hope no 
person will peruse my chapter and then decide 
that he cannot expect to succeed because he can- 
not afford to go to colleg-e or take up any special 
course in English. If you can turn out clear, 
idiomatic English sentences that will stand gram- 
matical analysis you need not fear failure because 
you were obliged to leave school before you could 
win a single diploma. A man may be a very good 
book-keeper and yet never have been to business 
college. The question is : Can he keep books sat- 
isfactorily? If he can his employer does not in 
the least care how he obtained his knowledge. 

Some persons have a natural appreciation of 
the principles of style, of rhyme and meter, of 
construction. They read a forceful passage or a 
beautiful poem or a carefully built argument and 
they immediately appreciate the rules which gov- 
ern it. They may not be able to quote any rules, 
but nevertheless they "sense" them and follow 
them faithfully in their ovrn work. Upon how- 
much natural appreciation of order, harmony, 
melody you may have depends the amount of 
actual study you must give to your preparation 
for the work of authorship. 

I believe that it is possible to unfit one's self 
for the real business of writing for publication 



10 Hozv to Write Short Stories 

by too much preparation, too much regular study. 
I have read articles intended for the popular 
magazines which would be meaningless to the 
average intelligent workman and the great mass 
of thoughtful and successful business men; and 
the writer hadn't the slightest intention of soaring 
over anybody's head. I have met university grad- 
uates who were trying to write for publications 
and who violated the fundamental principles of 
style and even the rules of grammar. I have 
known more than one would-be waiter who 
seemed unable to discuss anything nearer the in- 
terests of the mass of magazine readers than such 
subjects as "Little Known Comedies of Shakes- 
peare's Time" or "A Psychological Study of 
Charlotte Bronte." If courses in English can 
make a man unable to communicate with intelli- 
gent persons who have been interested in other 
fields of investigation, or so filled with admira- 
tion for the master pieces of literature that he 
forgets such commonplaces as coherence in the 
sentence and a pronoun must agree with its 
antecedent in person, number and gender, and 
cannot appreciate the fun and pathos and beauty 
about him, it may be a blessing that no course in 
higher English is possible for you. 

A woman who has for years earned her living 
by literary work told me that while in college 
she once consulted her English instructor about 
some additional work in English. "You don't 
need more English," the instructor replied. "What 
you need is a broader outlook. You need ex- 
perience of life." 



Hozv to Write Short Stories 11^ 

*'Oh !" exclaimed the student. Then she asked 
timidly, "But haven't I a broader outlook than 
most of the members of my class? I'm older 
than most of them, and I lived pretty hard be- 
tween my high school and college courses. 
Haven't 1 broader outlook than most of the 
others ?" 

"A hundred times broader," the instructor re- 
plied. 'T wasn't comparing you with the other 
members of your class but with George Eliot 
and other women who have succeeded as authors, 
the women whose profession you wish to enter. 
You can't become an author by just studying 
English." 

Not long afterwards the girl was obliged to 
leave college, but the fact that she could not com- 
plete her English course did not worry her. The 
instructor had made her eager to fare forth into 
the world in search of that knowledge of life 
which, to the writer with natural ability, means 
material. 

"But how can I tell whether I have this 'nat- 
ural abifity' or not?" asks a young writer. "My 
English is good, and I am never at a loss for 
words to express my thoughts. My friends en- 
joy my letters, and at school the teachers always 
praised my themes. But hundreds of other young 
men and women could claim as much. I love to 
write, but how can I know that I have the nat- 
ural equipment necessary to success as an 
author ?" 

The questioner shows that she has at least one 
requisite in the making of a successful author, a 



12 Hozv to Write Short Stories 

natural liking for the work of writing. How 
strong is your desire to write? Do you instinc- 
tively pick up a pad and pencil when you are free 
to think ? Has it ever been pain to you not to be 
at liberty to put upon paper a thought that has 
just sprung up or that has been slowly developing 
in your busy brain? Love for the work of writ- 
ing, a desire to express yourself, not in a picture 
or a statue or a piece of machinery, but in articles 
or stories or poems, this seems to me pretty sure 
evidence of natural ability. If you have to drive 
yourself to your desk I do not believe nature 
intended you to be a writer, no matter how cor- 
rectly and pleasingly you can run words together. 
What do you write when you feel you "must 
sit down and scribble," your own thoughts, or 
somebody else's ? Is your desire to write a desire 
for self-expression or is it just a fondness for 
putting words and sentences together? When 
your religious poem is finished is it made up of 
scraps from familiar hymns, phrases from the 
Bible, a statement that appealed to yot; in last 
Sunday's sermon, or is it a bit of your own ob- 
servation, your own experience, your own pas- 
sionate love for God, or Christ, or the church ? Is 
your article a careful setting forth of information 
gleaned from other articles or your own con- 
victions, so strong that you had to put them in 
writing, whether you offered your manuscript 
for sale or not? Is your story life as you know 
life can be, or just an imitation of some stor}^ 
seen in print or an adaption of some play. 



Hozv to Write Short Stories 13 

viewed from a comfortable seat in your favorite 
theatre ? 

In your story of sentiment are your characters 
the result of a study of certain combinations of 
defects and virtues, with powder to utter a clear 
warning or a word of hope, or to give the reader 
a healthful laugh? Or are your men and women 
and children picked out from other stories or 
just attractive pictures with no life, no strength, 
no vivacity? In other words, have you some- 
thing to say or only the power to group senten- 
ces and paragraphs into certain accepted forms. 

A woman told me that she had been urged by 
her friends to write; they thought she had con- 
siderable talent. She then naively asked me if 
I w^ould suggest something for her to write about 
It is thoughts, not words and sentences, that the 
editors are willing to pay for. If you have noth- 
ing to write about, don't write. 

A friend of mine who is very much interested 
in another profession than authorship told me 
wistfully that she envied those who could put 
their thoughts into lasting form. Not long after- 
wards a well-known magazine asked her for an 
article. A little later another magazine, which is 
working along the same lines as those my friend's 
profession follows, urged her to write a series of 
articles for its pages. She had never offered a 
manuscript to any periodical. 

"Favored because she has a prominent position 
and can place several letters after her name?" 
No, not that. The editors have sought her out 
because she has thought and studied and . ex- 



14 Hozv to Write Short Stories 

perimented until she knows more about certain 
subjects than you and I do, and an article from 
her on one of these subjects, though her style 
may be inferior to ours, is worth a great deal 
more to the reading public than one on the same 
subject frorn you or me. 

Have you discovered something that the rest 
of the world doesn't know? Have you seen sor- 
row or joy or sin or repentande as those about 
you have not seen it? Have you the power to 
find "something funny" in an experience which 
merely angers or depresses or bores other people? 
Have you anything at all to offer that can make 
life seem more serious, more joyous or more 
beautiful than it was before? Natural ability is 
more than the ability to express one's self easily 
in written words. It includes the power to find 
something to write about in the day's work and 
play, sorrow and pleasure. 

To reiterate: If you have a love for writing, 
unusual powers of penetration or appreciation or 
a mass of valuable information obtained at first 
hand and have mastered the fundamental prin- 
ciples of the work of authorship you are well- 
equipped mentally for the business of writing for 
publication. 

"I have appreciation," replies some young 
writer wistfully, "and I can talk or write 
fluently when I'm not vitally interested in what 
I'm saying. But when it comes to putting my 
deeper self, my highest thought into black and 
white I'm stricken. powerless. I can write only 
what seems to me not worth printing." 



Hoiij to Write Short Stories 15 

I once heard a story about a young man who 
wanted to take up a study of the piano. The 
teacher to whom he appHed for instruction gave 
him a piano stool, sat down beside him and called 
his attention to the key-board. "This," explained 
the teacher, indicating the middle c, "is c. We 
may find all the other keys by this. The one im- 
mediately below is b, the one below that is a. 
The one next above is d, the next e. and so on 
up to g." 

'T see," rephed the pupil respectfully. "Xow 
let's play the Moonlight Sonata !" 

It takes practice as well as natural ability and a 
knowledge of the rules to play Beethoven's i^Ioon- 
lige Sonata. It takes practice as well as a knowl- 
edge of the English language and natural abil- 
ity to produce a group of high-grade poems or 
articles or stories. Don't decide that you have 
not the necessary natural equipment and can 
never succeed in the profession of authorship 
because you can't write an epic or a masterpiece 
of fiction at the very beginning of your literary 
career. 



CHAPTER THREE 

The Finding of Time and Material 

A GAIN and again I have met sentences like 
-^^^^ this in letters accompanying manuscripts 
submitted for criticism : 'T have little time to 
write, being a busy housewife." "Unfortunately 
I am obliged to stand behind a counter ten hours 
a day." 'T hope some time to be out of the fac- 
tory and free to follow the profession of author- 
ship." Often the writers hint that success would 
have come to them long ago, had they had time 
to go out and invite it. I know that hundreds of 
men and women feel that if they could only 
spend all their time writing they would be blessed 
indeed. 

A man who has earned thousands of dollars 
writing for publication and who is selling books 
regularly told me that he believed it easier to get 
a start as an author if you had to earn your own 
living. 'T've known a number of young men," 
he said, "who have thrown up their positions in 
order to have more time to write, and each one 
has told me that as soon as he gave up his regular 
work the ideas that had been clamoring for ex- 
pression began to slink away. Each man con- 
fessed that when he had nothing to do but write 
he seemed to have nothing to say^" 

Of course after a writer has won distinct suc- 
cess and his desire is wholly toward the pro- 
fession of authorship he would be very foolish to 



How to Write Short Stories II 

keep himself to uncongenial employment for fear 
freedom would mean a dearth of ideas. It rs the 
beginner, who must live awhile before he can 
have very much to say, who is mistaken in sup- 
posing that he could profitably put in five or seven 
hours a day writing. But even the successful 
writers. I believe, feel the need of some less ex- 
alted task to enable them to do their best work in 
the line of authorship. Longfellow, whom we 
might think could work best if his thoughts were 
always on the heights, wrote : 

"The everyday cares and duties, which men call 
drudgery, are the weights and counterpoises of 
the clock of time, giving its pendulum a true 
vibration and its hands a regular motion ; and 
when they cease to hang from the wheels, the 
pendulum no longer swings, the hands.no longer 
move, the clock stands still." 

Longfellow's experience seems to confirm the 
statement of the vigorous young prose writer 
who is a part of the rushing literary life of the 
twentieth century. '^ 

You have to cook, nurse babies, "bang on a 
typewriter," oversee a camp of rough wood-chop- 
pers when you long to write. If to write is 
your peculiar gift you will be given time. While 
you are waiting you are living. And life means 
material. 

In proof of what I say let me give some ex- 
tracts from the history of a present-day writer : 
She studied English in high school and was told 
that she had unusual talent. Before she went to 
college she sold some little sketches to her home 



18 Hoiv to Write Short Stories 

newspaper; they were sketches depicting life in 
the town and pleased the readers of the town 
paper ; the editor had known that they would anri 
this is why he bought them. They did not deal 
with life outside the girl's small world. While in 
college she tried to secure some vacation work 
and was impressed by the "wants" in the news- 
paper .and the human nature back of them. She 
wrote an article about the "want column" and 
sold it to a small magazine. Then she was taken 
ill and her physician not only ordered her out of 
college but insisted that she do no more literary 
work for several months. He sent her away to a 
tiny little village hundreds of miles from New 
York. 

The girl obeyed the command to rest but as 
soon as she was herself again she wrote an ar- 
ticle, showing the little village as it had looked to 
her, coming fresh from New York, and she sold 
her manuscript to the Magazine Supplement of 
a New York newspaper. Before she could get 
back to her own work she was called to go to a 
college town and nurse a sick sister. She had 
no time to write while there but the contrast be- 
tween the old conservative town and the college 
life within it gave her an idea for another 
sketch. Later she wrote the sketch and sold it 
to a New York magazine. 

She fell sick again and another period of in- 
action followed. Then the physician suggested 
her taking up stenography and typewriting just 
because her active brain demanded exercise and 
she seemed unable to stand the nervous strain of 



I 



Hozv to Write Short Stories 19 

literary work or study which led to it. So she 
took up stenography. The new Hne of thought 
and the entirely fresh atmosphere of a business 
school worked wonders with her physically, and 
before she realized what she was doing she was 
planning a story about a boy stenographer. She 
had it all done but the final copying when she 
secured- her first position. 

The position was with a magazine editor, and 
that heartened her a good deal, but the regular 
hours and steady work were hard after the habit 
of semi -invalidism, and even with her new 
strength she did not dare do any further writing 
at home. She tried to be the very best stenogra- 
pher she could. But one day the editor of the 
Children's Page said to her, ''Do you happen to 
have a child's story I could examine? I want just 
a little story for the very little folks. I know you 
did some writing before you came to us. Have 
you a child's story?" 

Had she? Yes, a little story that had been 
carefully written, rejected by two or three ju- 
venile-magazines and then put away until she 
could decide what to do with it. She brought it to 
the office the next day and showed it to the editor. 

"Good," commented the editor, "up to here. I 
don't see why you added this last part. There's 
a good climax right here, and it ends a story of 
just the length I want. May I cut it off here?" 

The stenographer knew why she had added j:he 
last part, but she saw the good climax, with the 
editor's pencil pointing it out, and she agreed 
with a singing heart to sell the story in its cur- 



20 How to Write Short Stories 

tailed form. A little later she took out the boys' 
story, copied it in as plain long-hand as she could 
compass and sent it to the Youth's Companion, 
which promptly mailed her a check for thirty- 
five dollars. 

Then the magazine failed and she was obliged 
to take another position, with a drug house. One 
day the head chemist and a salesman had a quar- 
rel, after which the chemist went about his duties, 
irritated and depressed. The girl laughed at him 
and just to cheer him up sat down on a box in 
the laboratory and wrote a poem about the phar- 
maceutical salesman. She had not thought of pro- 
ducing anything for publication, but the chemist 
seemed to enjoy her effort so much that she type- 
wrote it and sent it to a pharmaceutical journal. 
It sold. 

The foregoing is enough to show how interest 
in the present task, combined with a love for 
writing and natural ability, may mean progress 
even though the disappointed writer feels he is 
standing still or going backwards. The woman 
whose experience I have been discussing finally 
found herself stenographer to the editor of a 
small magazine. She did not talk to him about 
her literary aspiration or thwarted hopes, but he 
very soon discovered that she could turn out clear, 
correct letters and had good literary judgment. 
Without her asking for any promotion or expect- 
ing one he offered her the position of associate 
editor on his magazine. Today she has a pecul- 
iarly pleasant editorial position which gives her 
time for private writing. She has sold to a long 



Hoiv to Write Short Stories 21 

list of periodicals and has a successful book to 
her credit. In her productions can be found the 
material which came to her through pain and 
weakness and grievous disappointments. 

If you are well and strong and have an income 
which involves no work on your part or a father 
able and willing to support you, your life may 
seem to you so smooth, so ''ordinary" that it is 
barren of material. Writers have produced mas- 
terpieces Vv^hile living quiet, conventipnal lives, 
but it takes unusual natural ability to see a book 
in such material as makes up Barriers \^z^/(i Licht 
Idylls or Jane Austen's Persuasion, just as it 
takes unusual natural ability to see a modish 
gown in two plain, old-fashioned garments or an 
attractive dwelling in an ordinary big barn. Un- 
less a writer has unusual talent he needs more 
striking material than a heavy snow-storm or an 
engagement broken because of a parent's or guar- 
dian's disapproval to enable him to produce an 
appealing sketch or novel. 

If your own Hfe is uneventful that of those 
about you is not. There is valuable information 
hidden away in your neighbor's brain. There are 
tragedies and comedies being enacted not very 
far from your own door. Don't sit in your study 
with your mind as blank as the sheets of paper 
before you. Tear up the regret you wrote a few 
minutes ago and "accept with pleasure" the in- 
vitation to one of Mrs. A's impossible dinners. 
Tell Mr. B. you've changed your mind and would 
like to accompany him to his employes' annual 
frolic. Ask the mother of the little curly-head 



22 ~ Hoiv to Write Short Stories 

across the street if you can't go with him to his 
kindergarten some morning. Let old Dr. D. tell 
you the story you were at such pains to stave off 
the last time you met him. Don't do these things 
with the idea of making "copy" of your friends 
and neighbors but in the hope of seeing life from 
new points of view. Sympathy, the power to see 
life as it looks to "the other fellow," even when 
he is your opponent or detractor, is a key to vast 
stores of material. 

I once heard an editor accept a manuscript 
with the remark : "Yes, I want it. It's all right ' 
You see more than most people. Many a writer 
would have gone up there where you've been and 
not found a thing worth writing about !" 

Get something for yourself out of each ac- 
quaintance and each experience and you'll soon 
find you have plenty of good material. But don't 
go through life as some people go through Europe 
or college, so busy taking notes that all you've 
gained is in your note-book. You can't get into 
sympathy with a phase of life by squinting at it 
through an eye-glass. "More life and fuller" is 
what the writers should crave. 

Of course a note-book has its place. A writer 
so fortunate as to possess a vest-pocket would 
be very foolish not to carry about with him a 
note-book into which he can put ideas that come 
to him by the way and seem as eager to go as they 
were to come. But don't be so busy taking notes 
on life that you lose opportunities to live. 

Remember, too, that no person can be always 
working and not give out. I once asked a phy- 



How to Write Short Stories 2-3 

sician if he would have thought a certain girl 
nervous if he had met her socially instead of pro- 
fessionally. He replied that he did not allow him- 
self to think of the physical condition of the 
people he met non-prof essionally ; that he found 
he must have some time free from professional 
cares if he would retain his health. Writers are 
usually high-strung. They need time that is free 
from work just as surely as mechanics and teach- 
ers and physicians do. 

Don't go to bed with a pencil in your hand and 
a note-book under your pillow and the electric 
switch so arranged that you can get light in- 
stantly in case an idea comes to you in the night. 
A rested body is quite as important as a well- 
stocked mind, when one is making a business and 
not a pastime of writing. 

A little of my own early experience may be a 
help to the brand-new writer who is still wonder- 
ing where authors lind their material. The first 
article I remember writing was a little sketch 
about correspondence. I had been struck with 
the fact that a great many people never really 
reply to a letter and that corresponding with 
them is a good deal like a German who can't un- 
derstand French trying to talk to a Frenchman 
who refuses to speak German. I wrote out my 
thoughts under the heading, ''Answer your Let- 
ters," and sold my manuscript to Kate Fied's 
Washington, a bright little magazine which many 
readers will remember. Fm afraid no other 
check, however generous, will ever give me such 
exquisite joy as that first one, for three dollars. 



24 Hoiv to Write Short Stories 

I had commented to a friend on the coincidence 
of a tradesman's name suggesting his business. 
Mr. Sweet kept a candy store and Mr. Stiff was 
an undertaker. Suddenly the idea of jotting 
down such coincidences and making an article 
about them occurred to me. I gathered all the 
material in or near my own city, Jersey City, and 
the Jersey City Journal gladly accepted and paid 
for my contribution. 

Later I happened to hear news of. some of my 
old high-school mates who were making a success 
in the world outside of Jersey City. I wrote 
another article on "What Becomes of our High 
School Graduates" and the Journal bought that 
also. In both of these sketches I had (uncon- 
sciously, I think) respected the truth that a man 
likes to see his own name and his neighbor's in 
print and has a kindly interest in those who are or 
have been his friends and neighbors. Gossip in 
its broader sense is easy to sell. 

For what seemed to me "good and sufficient 
reasons" I took up stenography. It was through 
my knowledge of stenography that I obtained a . 
position as "editorial assistant" on a household 
journal, ^^'hen I had been in my position a very 
few months the art editor (a very young man, by 
the way) said to me: "You can't fool us! We 
know you didn't come here to be a stenographer 
but because you wanted material. I know you've 
got poems and stories up your sleeve !" 

Whether he was right or not I won't say but 
I did gain a great deal of material in that office, 
besides a knowledge of proof-reading and a ccr- 



Hoiv io Write Short Stories 25 

tain insight into an editor's needs and' problems 
which stood me in good stead later on. And my 
study of stenography gave me one bit of "copy" 
that I certainly could not possibly have obtained 
without it. 

One noon-time the stenographer for the busi- 
ness manager of my magazine showed me a poem 
about a new stenographer's mistakes, and we 
laughed over it together. A little later a cousin 
of mine who was traveling in England and who 
thought my business course rather a joke cut the 
same poem from an English paper and sent it to 
me. Some months later I was talking to a man 
who wanted me to help him out while his sten- 
ographer was having her vacation and he showed 
me the same poem. It had evidently pleased the 
editors and been copied from periodical to 
periodical. 

I told the amused employer that the dictator 
was sometimes quite as unsatisfactory as the 
stenographer, and we had a good-humored argu- 
ment about the matter. On my way home I con- 
ceived the idea of answering the poem and before 
I left the train I had my lines pretty clearly 
worked out. At first I had no other thought 
than amusing myself and the man who had 
showed me the first poem, but by the time I had 
my production polished and copied I had decided 
to try and sell it. I traced the offending poem 
back to a western Sunday newspaper and sub- 
mitted my manuscript to this. An early mail 
brought me a letter from the editor, accepting the 
poem and asking for my picture. He said he 



26 Hozv to Write Short Stories 

wanted to reprint the first poem with mine and 
a picture of the author of the first poem and one 
of me. This was rather more publicity than I 
cared for, so the page was illustrated with two 
pen and ink sketches, one a carefully dressed, 
business-like man dictating to a dreadful, frowsy 
girl and the other an attractive, business-like 
girl taking dictation from an inefifective-looking 
fellow who was smoking and slouching in his 
chair. The poem was signed with a nom de 
plume, which the editor had chosen for me, ap- 
parently with the idea of allowing me to keep my 
name as sacred as I held my countenance. 

The thought I wish to bring out is that almost 
any experience which gives you a new glimpse of 
life may yield you material ^or a manuscript. 
Don't feel that a "little" sketch or poem or story 
isn't worth waiting. It isn't good common sense 
to try and build a house before you've demon- 
strated you can make a good chicken-coop. It 
isn't wise to begin poetry writing wnth a sonnet or 
prose writing w^ith a drama. Just how you begin 
must of course be largely governed by your age, 
education and the opportunities you have had for 
mental and spiritual development, but I think 
it's a safe general rule to let your material be 
your guide. If you use the "little" ideas well the 
big ideas will be more likely to seek you out. 

A college student chose for his motto : "Seek- 
ing earnestly after the truth do day by day the 
truth you have." A good motto for the new 
writer would be: Seeking earnestly after the he si 
material let me use as best I know hozv the 
material I already have. 



CHAPTER FOUR 
Hints for Equipping the Shop 

fTlO judge by myself and some other writers I 
-^ have had opportunity to observe, writers are 
not always naturally methodical. The young- 
writer is apt to pride himself on his littered desk 
and does not at all mind confessing that he has 
a valuable memorandum or outline "somewhere," 
but cant for the life of him find it! Because a 
man is not naturally methodical is not a good 
reason why he should cultivate disorderly habits. 
Time is precious and it behooves none of us to 
waste it. It is not good business sense to strew 
your tools about and have no regular place for 
your material. If you are orderly in your habits 
in the very beginning you will save yourself a 
great deal of irritation and nervous w^ear in the 
days to follow, when you have come to feel that 
every minute is valuable. 

'T think," wrote a correspondent, "that I sent 
this story to Collier's, but it's so long ago I'm 
not sure." 

Another writer sent a magazine with which I 
was conected a vigorous protest against its hav- 
ing filed the child of her brain, ticketed it like 
hundreds of other manuscripts! She then calmed 
down sufficiently to add that she could not re- 
member the title of her manuscript. She had 
sent her precious child on a long journey and had 



28 Hozv to Write Short Stories 

neglected to write down its name and destination 
and the date it left her ! 

Some months ago I wrote an article on a sub- 
ject in which only a few magazines are interested. 
I made myself a list of possible markets and then, 
after talking the matter over with a literary 
friend, I picked up my manuscript record and 
jotted down the names of three magazines he 
wished me to try. To one of these my article 
seemed peculiarly suited. Now a manuscript 
record is not intended for lists of possible markets 
but for the names of periodicals to which man- 
uscripts are actually sent. Soon after I made my 
entry I became so engrossed with my criticism 
work that I had no time to think of the article. 
A recent event has made it timely. But my man- 
uscript record shows the names of three markets, 
without dates, and after the market I am most 
anxious to try there is a question mark. Did 
I try any of the three? Did I learn any fact after 
talking with my friend that made me doubt the 
wisdom of trying this particular market or does 
my question mark mean that I didn't know 
whether I tried it or not? I can't tell and be- 
cause I can't tell I may lose a sale. I don't just 
like to send an editor an article I may have 
already sent him and had returned to me as un- 
available for his magazine. Usually my record is 
clear and accurate but by this one irregularity I 
have caused myself a good deal of annoyance and 
perhaps a definite loss. 

If you have only written one manuscript for 
publication begin a manuscript record. You can 



Hozv to Write Short Stories 29 

buy a book prepared expressly for the use of 
writers or you can use a blank-book you happen 
to have at hand. Whatever you use be neat and 
orderly in your entries. Have spaces for the 
title of your manuscript, the magazines to which 
it is sent, the date it is mailed, the date it is re- 
jected or accepted and extracts from any per- 
sonal letters you may receive concerning it. 

The extracts from personal letters are a help 
in determining the needs of the editors from 
whom they emanate, and they also have the 
power to cheer the waiter with the thought that 
he "almost made" a magazine he hopes to satisfy 
some day. 

Every writer needs a book of markets. There 
is, of course, a good printed list of markets which 
can be bought for $2.50, but, to some beginners 
$2.50 would seem a large sum and as such a book 
can have no interest for the non-writing members 
of a family the thoughtful young writer may hes- 
itate to accept so much from the over-taxed f am • 
ily treasury. If so, he can make himself a very 
helpful list of markets by the exercise of some 
thought and ingenuity. 

In almost every home there are three or four 
good magazines. Get a square note-book of large 
size, preferably a loose-leaf note-book, and divide 
it up so that your entries will follow the order of 
the alphabet. Near the end of each year the 
magazines make announcements, showing what 
they intend to offer for the following year. Cut 
out these announcements or as much of them as 
seems to indicate what will be bought by each 



30 Hozv to Write Short Stories 

magazine the coming year or the general poHcy 
followed. Make some long-hand or typewritten 
notes from your observations, such as follows : 

Uses five short stories (from 2,000 to 3,500 words) 
each issue; one article (sometimes serious, sometimes 
humorous) ; one poem (any type but religious). Seems 
to avoid tragedy in fiction. Editors evidently against 
woman's suffrage. Apparently likes stories about (not 
for) children. 

Borrow the magazines in your friends' 
homes and study them. Go over those to be 
found in the public libraries in your vicinity. 
,Look over the table of contents on the cover 
page of the magazines displayed on the news- 
stands. If you hear that any periodical is offer- 
ing sample copies free send for one. Grasp every 
opportunity that presents itself to gain an in- 
sight into the policies of the magazines you would 
like to please and of the magazines which can be 
a help to you in climbing to these. 

If the periodicals to which you intend to sub- 
mit manuscripts print editorials study these dili- 
gently. In a note-book such as I have suggested 
I find this : 

The editors are (1) advocating frankness with the 
child concerning sex relations; (2) fighting the use of 
aigrettes and Paradise plumes in women's hats; (3) 
advocating American designs in place of those from 
Paris ; (4) never scoff at religion and often print 
articles with broad religious teaching. 

After reading such a note I shall not make the 
mistake of sending the magazine discussed a story 
in which a lovely and loving mother tells her 



How to Write Short Stories 31 

little boy of the stork which brought his small 
sister, or one about a girl who longed for a 
Paradise plume and earned one by patience and 
industry. I might, on the other hand, see just 
where to offer my article on ''The Bad Boy's In- 
fluence in One School and How it was Counter- 
acted" or my story about a bishop who was 
Christlike rather than orthodox. 

More lengthy notes than are possible in your 
manuscript record should be taken from the edi- 
tors' personal letters and entered in your book 
of markets. Note the following: 

''We are avoiding foot-ball stories this year. 
So many accidents have occurred in the recent big 
games that the parents are asking us not to fan 
the interest in foot-ball." 

Such a letter yields you the memorandum : 

No foot-ball stories in (the year.) 

"We receive too many serious stories. We want 
our pages to be helpful and uplifting but we want 
them to be entertaining and cheering. Can't you 
let us see another of your rough-and-tumble 
tales?" 

Your book of markets receives the hint : Uses 
occasional "rough-and-tumble" stories. 

A magazine like the Literary Digest or Current 
Opinion will afford you a great deal of informa- 
tion. These magazines buy no manuscripts but 
they quote from a great many periodicals that do 
and enable the writer to keep in fairly close 
touch with what the editors and publishing houses 
are doing. Indeed, there are a great many ways 
besides those I have suggested by which the alert 



32 How to Write Short Stories 

young writer can obtain a knowledge of that 
very important factor in his business, the hterary 
market. 

Besides the envelopes for sending out his man- 
uscripts and for the editors' convenience in re- 
turning them if they prove unavailable, the writer 
needs some envelopes for his carbon copies or 
the long-hand copies which he retains for him- 
self. 

When you finish an article place your carbon 
copy in an envelope bearing the title and file un- 
der "Carbons of. Unsold Manuscripts" so that 
you will have no difficulty in finding it should 
your submitted manuscript be lost in the mails. 
When the manuscript is sold mark on the en- 
velope, "Sold to ," and refile under "Car 

bons of Sold Manuscripts." 

It is a good plan to place in the envelope with 
the carbon copy of an unsold manuscript all the 
personal letters received about it. A perusal of 
these personal letters will help you to determine 
whether your list of markets or the manuscript 
itself is to blame for your rejections. 

Have a letter-file or some definite place for 
your personal letters from editors. If you follow 
the plan suggested in the preceding paragraph 
your file will hold only acceptances and letters 
regarding rejected manuscripts which sold later. 
But whatever method you adopt be sure to know 
where to find every note which may possibly help 
you in marketing manuscripts or which offers 
suggestions worth heeding in further work. 

Every writer needs some device for picking 



Hoiv to Write Short Stories 33 

up and hoarding material. A note-book (prefer- 
ably loose-leaf) is of course the best for the 
author who gathers his notes as he moves about 
a factory or store or travels from place to place. 
A plan which suits my own needs is a basket con- 
taining long envelopes marked with. the subjects 
which interest me generally or some specific p!ot 
or idea for an article that I happen to have in 
mind. If a thought comes to me I jot it down on 
any scrap of paper that happens to be at hand 
and thrust it into the proper envelope. I have 
one envelope marked simply ''Ideas" into which 
goes any miscellaneous idea that I think I may 
some day have a use for. Then when I am ready 
to begin the story or article I have planned I sit 
down with my scraps of paper and my memory 
is refreshed and my purpose' is strengthened as 
I go over the thoughts which came to me while 
I was busy with other matters. 

If you do much writing you will find that you 
use a great many pads and your family will have 
it against you that you "waste reams of paper." 
See if some business friend won't let you have 
the defective or "spoiled" sheets that would oth- 
erwise go into the waste-basket. Perhaps in the 
attic there is a pile of letter-heads, left from 
some abandoned business or discarded because 
of a change of address. Capture these and use 
the blank sides of your good copies. A little 
neat printing on the back of a sheet does not an- 
noy the editor in the least. Perhaps you may also 
be fortunate enough to find some envelopes which 
will hold vour sheets when folded twice and 



3i Hozv to Write Short Stories 

which with only the blocking out of the address 
in the upper left-hand corner will serve to carry 
your manuscripts safely to and from the editor- 
■ ial offices. 

In the matter of stamps I'm afraid I can't ofifer 
any suggestion that will enable the new writer to 
begin business without an outlay. When I was a 
little girl I used occasionally to buy a stamp from 
a German grocer, whose store was very many 
blocks nearer my home than any Post Office 
station. One day he showed me a sheet of 
stamps, worth probably two dollars, and told me 
it had cost him five cents. To my exclamation 
and remark that my father had told me it didn't 
matter how many stamps you bought each one 
would cost two cents he replied, smiling, "Oh 
Iwas just trying to' open your heart a little !" 

"Open your heart" was a new expression to 
me, but after a day or two I worked out the con- 
clusion that the grocer was trying to show me 
that I was imposing on him by asking him to 
come out of his retreat back of the store and 
hand me a stamp. A good many times since I've 
wished I knew a place where I really could buy 
a big sheet of stamps for five cents ! But though 
we writers are such faithful patrons of his, Uncle 
Sam still insists that we have no special rates, 
and as long as he is the only fellow^ in the business 
of carrying manuscripts we'll have to accept his 
services at his own terms. 



CHAPTER FIVE 

Common Business Sense in Meeting 
the Market 

TF you are a business man and are handed the 
-^ card of some person you have never seen and 
asked to give him a few minutes of your 
time and you go to the room where callers wait 
and find two men you instantly know which one 
you prefer to talk to. Without consciously think- 
ing about the matter you are annoyed when the 
carefully dressed, bright-faced fellow keeps his 
seat and the slouchy man with a spot on his collar 
comes forward to meet you. Moreover, if you 
accost the carefully dressed caller and he replies 
with a smile that is courteous rather than familiar 
that he is waiting for Mr. Somebody Else your 
sense of preference deepens, even before the 
slouchy man has shown his bad breeding by talk- 
ing too loudly or making a suggestion which 
should have been left to you or disgusted you 
by his obsequiousness. 

When a manuscript goes seeking an interview 
it should be correct in appearance and its manner 
of presenting itself. It is discourteous to send 
out a manuscript that is soiled or which has been 
corrected until it is hard to follow. It is bad 
taste to tell the editor about your family affairs' 
when you are submiting a manuscript for sale. 
It is bad manners to suggest that your article or 
poem or story is better than anything he has yet 



36 Hozv to Write Short Stories 

published. It is not good business sense to be dis- 
courteous, whether you are trying to sell an auto- 
mobile or a manuscript. 

It was once my task to see that the manu- 
scripts rejected by a certain magazine were re- 
turned to their owners. Those that were beau- 
tifully clean, folded just right to fit their return 
envelopes and slipped into the slot of the mail 
chute without protest always left my hands with 
regret while those that were untidy or awkward 
to handle were disposed of with a sigh of relief. 
I dare say the editors who read them as well as 
handled them shared my feelings. Indeed, I once 
heard an editor say that manuscript readers were 
only human and could not help being attracted 
or repelled by a manuscript because of its ap- 
pearance. Yet despite the fact that article after 
article and chapter after chapter has been written, 
explaining just how to prepare manuscripts for 
publication, there are still writers who roll their 
manuscripts, use note-books that are awkward to 
handle and heavy to hold, send return envelopes 
that could not possibly contain the manuscripts 
they accompany or in some other way cause un- 
necessary trouble in the editorial office. 

I have examined manuscripts filled with small 
errors which the writers frankly acknowledged 
and half promised to eliminate when they had 
more time. These manuscripts had evidently 
been interviewing editors just as they reached 
me. How long would it take you to send back 
a filing-cabinet that was delivered to you with the 
wood unpolished ? How long would you employ 



Hoz^' to Write Short Stories 37 

a dress-maker who sent your gowns home with 
the bastings still in and the seams unpressed? 

It is not good business sense (1) to make your 
manuscript into a package so thin and flat that it 
is liable to be bent or broken in the mails; (2) 
expect the editor to pay postage before he can 
secure your manuscript from the Post Office; (3) 
fasten a stamp to your manuscript when you 
know a detached stamp leaves a soiled spot be- 
hind it and is awkward to use again; (4) use 
paper which will tire the editor's eyes and make 
him anxious to lay your manuscript aside; (5) 
ask the editor to provide you with a return en- 
velope ; (6) expect the editor to do some of the 
work which you hope to induce him to pay you 
for doing. 

The courteous, business-like manuscript ap- 
pears before the editor, correct, clean and fresh 
and with just a brief note, stating that it is offered 
for publication at the editor's regular rates, with 
once in a while some such addition as the follow- 
ing : 

"As my story involves a knowledge of engineering I 
had it read by my friend, Professor A. T. Symthe, of 

the ; School of Mines. He permits 

me to use his name in connection with the statement 
that the story is correct and plausible, considered from 
the engineer's point of view." 

"I lived in Norway for ten years and know the 
peasant life there." 

"As I make some rather startling statements in 
regard to the cruelty of certain well-known companies 
you may wish a reference as to my reliability. I refer 
you to Mr. Alfred Thompson, of the S. P. C. A., in 

, who will be glad to vouch for me 

and my investigations." 



38 Hotv to Write Short Stories 

"Aiy name is doubtless unfamiliar to you. Until 

recently I have used the nom de plume, , 

I have been a contributor to under this 

name for the past two years." 

After you have begun to succeed the editor may 
v^^rite you kindly, interesting letters, w^hich war- 
rant you in abandoning your formal tone in 
submitting further v^^ork, but it's good business 
sense to let the editor be the one to drop the bars. 

A physician told me that he liked to place 
orders through a certain salesman because he 
knew enough not to waste a patron's time. "If 
I snap out, 'Nothing today !' he withdraws with 
only a courteous bow," the doctor explained. 
"He has sense enough to see I'm not cross, but 
just busy." I wish I could convince some of the 
new writers that it's not good business sense to 
waste the editor's time when submitting manu- 
scripts for sale. 

In marketing manuscripts let your attitude be 
that of the well-bred, well-trained salesman who 
believes in the thing he has to sell and who ex- 
pects to sell it for no other reason than that it 
is good of its kind and well adapted to the needs 
of the customej. 

An editor told me that she dreaded Christmas 
time because her mail brought her so many pitiful 
letters. It is not good business sense to ask an 
editor to take your manuscript because you need 
money. If you intended to open a store you 
would not want to buy certain property because 
the man who owned it needed the money he had 
invested in it. You would think it only fair that 
you be left free to select a building that was well 



Hozv to Write Short Stories 39 

heated and well lighted, convenient to the patrons 
you hoped to hold or to win, in all respects adap- 
ted to your business. You haven't a great deal of 
patience with the robust young man who tries to 
sell you poor needles or carbon paper because he 
has "a sick wife and three small children at 
home." Would you really want the editor to ac- 
cept an article or story or poem of yours just 
because he felt sorry for you? If so, you are not 
an artist and not a workman entitled to the re ■ 
spect of your fellows. You are rather a beggar, 
ashamed to confess that you are a beggar and 
hiding under the garb of an honest toiler. 

In my correspondence with new v/riters I have 
been struck by the fact that a great many of them 
are not interested in the question of how to write 
what will sell. They want to know how they can 
sell what they write. 

"I, know my manuscript is still faulty," writes one, 
"but I've worked on it until I'm sick of it. Can't you 
help me to sell it just as it is?" 

"I know there isn't much demand for this kind of 
thing," says another, "but I do love to dabble in psychol- 
ogy! Don't you know of some magazine that could use 
my manuscript?" 

"I know these sketches are not exactly what the 
editors are looking for," admits a third ; "they were 
written for a club to which I belong. But I'd like to 
sell them if I could." 

The successful farmer doesn't take his one 
pound chickens to market because he's tired of 
fussing with the scrawny little things. He doesn't 
raise sunflowers because they please his aesthetic 
taste and then expect to sell them. He doesn't 



40 How to Write Short Stones 

cover his fences with sweet-smelHng wild grape- 
vines and then as an after-thought try to sell the 
grapes. Except in his kitchen-garden, where he 
grows what he likes, or what his wife likes, he 
raises that which the green-grocers and house- 
wives who are his customers have shown them- 
selves willing to buy. He doesn't raise pigs be- 
cause he likes pigs but because pigs will sell and 
bring in a good return for the time and money in- 
vested in them. 

It is not good business sense to offer for sale 
that which is inferior or which has not yet 
matured. It is not good business sense to offer 
for sale that for which there is no demand, un- 
less, of course, your product is so excellent and 
so tempting that it creates its own demand. It 
is not good business sense to offer as a specimen 
of your wares a product which just happened to 
grow in your garden or your brain or which was 
produced for some entirely different purpose than 
satisfying the demands of the market. 

A study of two or three copies or even of one 
copy of a magazine will give you a very fair idea 
of what the editor of that magazine is buying. A 
study of three or four magazines of the type you 
wish to please will give you a very fair idea of 
the kinds of manuscripts this type of magazine 
buys. If you like to write allegories, monologues, 
poems of from 200 to 2,000 lines, essays on such 
general and -over-worked topics as ''childhood" 
or "a mother's influence" there is no reason why 
you should not employ yourself in this way. But 
if the magazines you wish to please use only short 



Hoiv to Write Short Stories 41 

stories, poems of from four to thirty-two lines 
and articles on current topics it is not good busi- 
ness sense to send them these manuscripts which 
it so pleased you to write. 

As a good general rule it is best for the new 
writer to put his thoughts into one of three forms, 
into a short story, an article or a poem, taking 
care that no story runs over 5,000 words, no article 
over 3500 words and no poem over thirty-tw^o 
lines. Until you have created a demand for your 
work it is wise to produce that for which there 
is the largest market. I believe that many a man- 
uscript is returned to the author unread because 
the editor sees at a glance that, however good it 
may be, it is too long for his periodical or is in a 
form which is excluded by his policy. 

As a second rule I suggest : Be guided by your 
temperament, your training and your experience 
of life. I once saw an editor fling down a manu- 
script with the exclamation : "I wonder why peo- 
ple who have never been to New York will per- 
sist in laying their scenes there ! 'The Metropol- 
itan Opera House was crowded to the doors !' I 
hadn't read a page before I knew that girl had 
never been inside the Metropolitan Opera House 
in her life." Life in the little hamlet or village 
you know so w^ell may have far more charm for 
the New York reader than the rush and rivalry 
of a big city. The city, which you do not know, 
appeals to you because you do not know it. The 
village, which the city reader can never know 
as you do, may charm him for this very reason. 
At any rate you cannot succeed if you persist in 



42 How to V/rite Short Stories 

depicting that which you yourself have never 
been in a position to _appreciate. 

My third rule follows naturally after the sec- 
ond : Be sincere. I have read manuscripts which 
showed plainly that they were written by begin- 
ners and yet they were so sincere, so conscientious 
in presenting what the writers beheved to be the 
truth, so free from the affectation of discussing 
that which the writers admired but did not know 
that they awakened both respect and confidence. 
And I have read others that affected me like an 
insincere compliment or a patch of rouge. 

It is insincere to try and play upon the reader's 
sympathies by depicting sorrows which you have 
no reason to believe ever existed or could exist. 
For example, it seems to me insincere to show 
a virtuous and refined young woman who must 
choose between seeing her baby starve or going 
on the street and using what remains of her 
physical charm to attract some dissolute fellow 
with money in his pockets. Where are the Sal- 
vation Army stations? Where are the college 
settlements? Where are the kindly priests and 
clergymen who are making a business of helping 
God's poor ? Where, indeed, are the generoiis 
poor themselves that such an outrage as this is 
necessary. 

A nurse from one of the New York Settlement 
homes told me that she once went to a tenement 
to prepare a patient for transportation to the 
hospital and found the woman with absolutely no 
clothes fit to put on. The room in which she lay 
was so dark that they had to have a light, though 



Hozv to Write Short Stories 43 

it was only two o'clock in the afternoon. The 
neighbors were not much better off than the 
patient, but they eagerly ran to their own poor 
quarters and gathered up the best they had and 
soon the woman was in a clean night-dress with 
a decent dressing-gown about her. 

"But she can't go without stockings," protested 
the nurse. "She must have something on her 
feet." 

The women looked at one another. It was 
clear that no one had a whole pair of -stockings 
among her clean clothes. As the nurse pondered 
one of the women suddenly sat down on the 
floor, took off her shoes and quickly stripped her 
feet of what was evidently the only pair of pre- 
sentable stockings she had in the world. 

That was real New York. Doesn't it sound as 
though a girl could get a bit of bread for herself 
and milk for her child without imperiling her 
soul? There is plenty of pathos about us without 
our manufacturing it, and plenty of humor and 
other story material. It is not good business 
sense to manufacture that which can be had by 
simply picking it up as it lies at your feet, es- 
pecially when the natural product sells so much 
more readily and so much higher up than the 
manufactured. 

My last rule is : Think occasionally of the in- 
dividual editor and his desire to please the read- 
ing public as well as of yourself and your desire 
to .sell your manuscripts. There are few men, 
1 think, able to withstand the lure of being under- 
stood. 



44 Hozv to Write Short Stories 

I once had an editorial position with a house 
that printed a technical magazine and published 
a few books in line with the magazine. We kept 
some sample copies in our outer office and took 
subscriptions and sold books there. I was in- 
tensely interested in the magazine and thought 
the books the best of their kind on the market. 
When patrons dropped into the office they very 
often told me a little about their work, and I 
showed them the books and explained the scope 
of the magazine. But selling books and taking 
subscriptions were not my particular duties and 
my superior complained that I spent too much 
time talking to patrons and banished me to a 
little office of my own in another building. 

About six months later he said to me : "Do 
you know, we take in very little money at the 
office since you've been over here? I guess it 
pays to spend time talking to visitors after all !" 

Now I hadn't had any experience in selling 
subscriptions and books and, indeed, had not 
tried to sell any. My success lay in the fact that 
I was able to get into sympathy with the people 
who came to the office and as at the same time 
I believed our books and magazines were just 
what they needed I was able to secure their sub- 
scriptions and sell them books. While I was 
talking to a patron I was more interested in him 
or her than in our publishing business. 

If you can get into sympathy with the editor's 
needs and difficulties and at the same time have 
something in your brain or your desk that could 
be of definite service to him it will not be a very 



Hoiv to JVritc Short Stories 45 

hard matter to induce him to buy your manu- 
scripts. But the imderstanding is a necessity. 
The editor won't change his poHcy for you, no 
matter how he may rate your work. The best 
salesman can't sell a pipe-organ to a man who is 
getting ready to raise chickens or an incubator to 
a boy whose one hobby is collecting stamps. 

But must we think of nothing but sales f' 
asks the young writer with the serious eyes. 
"Must we throw away all our ideals because we 
want to make a success of writing?" 

Sometimes, doubtless, an author has had to 
choose between his ideals and a sale, but doesn't 
our study of literature show us that it is the man 
who has refused to throw away his ideals who has 
won real success, whose work has stood the test 
of time and shifting fashions? Then, too, the 
chances are that if you are a person who would 
suffer in discarding your ideals, and have not 
yet succeeded in producing a story not governed 
by an ideal, you couldn't please the periodicals 
with any ideals, no matter how hard you tried. 

If you are able to write what pleases the 
popular magazines and yet have the natural talent 
and cultured taste necessary to satisfy the best 
publications you are, judging you from a business 
viewpoint, a fortunate person. You can work 
your way from the lesser to the greater maga- 
zines and publishing houses in the same way 
that an intelligent, ambitious boy works from a 
clerkship to a partnership. But if you are so 
constituted or so environed that you can't turn 
out manuscripts suited to any but the best readers 



46 Hozv to Write Short Stories 

accept the condition cheerfully, remembering 
that success is no less sweet because it comes 
suddenly after long and patient effort instead 
of being won little by little with every passing 
day. 

Whatever we do let us not make the mis- 
take of thinking that the present-day Avriters 
who are succeeding, are succeeding because their 
standard is lower than ours or because they have 
thought only of fame or financial gain. It 
doesn't follow that because I don't like a book 
or think it harmful that it isn't likable or is per- 
nicious. Because a man doesn't respect my ideal 
it doesn't follow that he hasn't any of his own. 

Personally I'd rather have written one book' 
like Mrs. Prentiss' Stepping Heavenward than 
a thousand like The Gadfly. I'd rather have 
made $100 writing Pam than $100,000 with The 
Woman Thou Gavest to he with Me. But many 
people consider The Woman Thou Gavest to he 
with Me a strong book and see a very good reason 
for the existence of The Gadfly, and there are 
some, I know, who think the Pam I look upon 
as so helpful not fit reading for their growing 
daughters; and one very religious woman told 
me she didn't care for Stepping Heavenward be- 
cause no real husband, if a Christian, would be 
as thoughtless as Mrs. Prentiss' doctor. She 
was a married woman too ! 

You may have to wait a bit longer because 
you think more about ideals than you do about 
checks, but I don't believe success is denied us 
because we have chosen "the better part." It's 



i7ow to Write SJiort Stories 17 

usually quite possible for a writer to be true to 
his principles and say what he has to say and yet 
be a good enough business man to put his 
thoughts into a form acceptable to the reading 
public. Mrs. Prentiss made her book on the 
Christian life exceedingly interesting and Pain 
managed not only to preach a sermon but to 
please the folks who enjoy a peep into Bohemia; 
and the publishers of both books had no reason 
to complain of the sales. 

I don't believe any of us will fail because w^hat 
we offer is too good. 

I once sat at a counter next to a handsome, 
stately colored woman who was looking at 
lingerie dresses. The saleswoman held up a 
number for her inspection and then said hesitat- 
ingly, "We have some better ones." 

"Show them to me !" commanded the colored 
woman, pushing aside the pile before her. "The 
best's none too good for me !" 

Don't hesitate to give your best when you are 
building your article or story or poem. Only 
in this way can you hope to increase your powers. 
And, whatever the writers may think about it, 
the editor believes that the best's none too good 
for him. 



CHAPTER SIX 

The Great Art of Story Writing: 
Construction 

"Mama, tell me a story !" begs the small boy, 
tired .with too much play. And his big sister 
saunters over to the mother's chair to listen. 

"Antonio, tell us a story !" commands the 
Captain on that famous "cold, cold night." And 
all the camp gathers about Antonio. 

"Tell us the old, old story 
Of Jesus and His love" 

sings the religious poet who Avants to appeal to 
men and women as well as growing boys and 
girls and very little children. 

We^ are not very long too young and rarely 
grow too old to like to hear a story. It is no 
wonder, then, that there is a very wide market 
for stories and that the young writer, eager for 
checks and fame, should be deeply concerned 
with the question of how to write stories that 
will please the reader and satisfy the editor. As 
the rules underlying the making of a short story 
(that is, a story adapted to publication in a single 
issue) are essentially those which should be 
followed in the chapter in a long story, a study 
of the short story will well repay any author 
desirous of producing fiction. 

The specific field of the story is to interest. It 
may give artistic pleasure ; it may instruct or 
convict or convert ; it mav stimulate the reader to 



Hozv to Write Short Stories 49 

fresh endeavor or draw him to a higher mental 
or spiritual plane ; but all this is aside from its 
main office. Poetry for the artistic man, sermons 
for the lazy or discouraged man, articles and 
essays for the man who needs instruction ; but for . 
the man who wants to be interested, stories. 

The office of the story is to interest. Because 
it can interest it has been used with marvellous 
effect to instruct and convict and uplift. But 
before you seek to instruct or convict or uplift 
your reader you should make sure that you can 
interest him; you can't instruct or convince a 
man who won't listen to you. 

The short story should catch the interest in^ 
the very beginning and should hold it firmly 
until the last word has been said. Now just 
here comes in some of that fundamental matter 
I have been talking about : In order to catch and 
hold the interest your short story must be con- 
structed according to certain rules. ^ 

A short story, say those who are considered 
authorities on the technique of story writing, 
should have a definite introduction, a definite 
body and a definite climax, and these parts 
should be so nicely balanced that no one seems 
too heavy or too. light for the others. In follow- 
ing these simple rules let us continually use our 
God-given common sense, without which, as I 
shall continue to assert, we cannot hope to suc- 
ceed in the business of writing. 

If my story naturally opens with a hero in 
the middle of a vigorous fist fight I need not 
make the man put on his coat and brush his hair 



50 Hoiv to Write Short Stories 

in order that I may introduce him to the reader 
in correct form. Will the fight introduce him, 
show what has given him the right to play the 
part of hero and why there is to be a story at all? 
If so, no matter how abrupt my beginning may 
be I have an introduction and all the introduction 
that is needed, even though it may be difficult to 
tell where my introduction ends and my body be- 
gins. The office of the introduction is simply 
to c^tch the interest and hold it until the body 
can be introduced. 

A short story should have an introdiiction. 
Little Ann, writing her first story, has never 
read this rule but she feels that an introduction 
is a necessity. And she is in the habit of giving 
attention to details. She therefore begins her 
narrative with a careful description of the place 
where her scene is laid, of her characters and of 
the events which have influenced their lives up 
to the time her story begins. All this takes words 
and before there is any action at all, any real 
story, little Ann has written three thousand 
words or so of clear and perfectly correct Eng- 
lish. Now, either she must extend her story into 
a narrative too long for a single chapter or she 
must crowd her action into too small a space. 
With all her sense of order Ann has neglected to 
keep her proportions correct. As I said, she 
has not read the rules and she has not realized 
that her introduction must not be out of propor- 
tion to the body of her story. 

_'AY hg-t I want is to produce a good yarn!" 
interrupts an impatient author. "I don't care 



Hoiv to Write Short Stories 51 

whether it's correctly proportioned or not. I 
don't give a hang for the artistic stunt !" 

"A good yarn !" That's what Httle Ann wanted 
to produce, though she w^ould have said *'an 
interesting story." A good general result, that's 
what all the writers are striving for and the 
editors demanding. But you can't produce ai 
good result without consciously or unconsciously I 
following good rules. And a very good rule is 
that your introduction must not over-balance 
your body and climax. It seems rather a pity 
that Ann's story will never be published just be- 
cause the editor was not lured through her 3,000 
words of introduction to discover her very good 
body and climax beyond. 

Is your introduction so long that the reader 
may lose interest before he reaches the real begin- 
ning of your story? Is it so abrupt, so hasty that 
the action confuses the reader, who is utterly un- 
prepared for it and wholly unacquainted with the 
persons who take part in it? If you must answer 
"Yes," you have a poor introduction, no matter 
how carefully and cleverly written it may be. 

The introduction may be long or short but it 
must accomplish its office of catching the interest 
and holding it until the body is reached. The in- 
troduction is important in that it prepares the 
mind for the story proper. If when it is ended \ 
the reader understands the situation and is eager L 
to go on into the body of the narrative it has done] 
■its work well ; whether it is made up of action, 
conversation, description or discussion of char- 
acter makes no difference, providing it leaves no 



52 Hozv to Write Short Stories 

confusion in the reader's mind and makes him 
eager to forge on into the body of the tale. 

The body, of course, is the main part of the 
story; Its~office, beside maintaining the interest 
created by the introduction and steadily increas- 
ing it, is to bring about the climax . It should be 
made up ot action with just enough conversation 
and explanation and description and discussion 
of thought to make the action clear, the characters 
real and interesting and the general effect smooth 
and pleasing. 

A writer recently wrote me, begging to be in- 
formed if by action the editors meant elopements, 
automobile accidents and the like. He knew 
they did not. He was merely a little out of tem- 
per because an editor had told him that his stories 
lacked action. 
\ Action, to the editor, means forward move- 
'ment on the part of the plot. A man may move 
forward by running as fast as his legs will carry 
him, or he may propel himself in a wheel chair, 
or he may ride an old-fashioned high-seated 
bicycle, or he may sit quietly in the coach of a 
railway train and be carried on and on. It is 
by no means necessary that he steal a high-power, 
this year's automobile or soar aloft in a Zeppelin 
in order to move forward. But he can't move 
forward on a bicycle that has lost its wheels or 
in a coach that is not attached to an engine or 
by calmly looking out of his bed-room window 
and inspecting the landscape. The body must 
contain action, in other words ; not necessarily 



Hoiv to Write Short Stories 53 

exciting or unusual incident, but progress toward 
a definite end. 

Again it is merely a question of interest. The 
normal mind demands exercise. No matter how 
beautiful or novel the furnishings of a drawing- 
room may be, no matter how lovely or wonderful 
the scene upon which it looks, the healthy occu- 
pant soon tires of it. A perfectly normal man 
would rather be out on a slippery pavement, 
battling with snow and wind and being jostled 
by the passers-by, than sitting luxuriously inside, 
where nothing happens. So the active-minded 
reader soon tires of narrative, however well done, 
which does not mean constant forward movement 
toward a definite end. 

For action you may have an escaped convict 
scaling a convent wall and later causing himself 
to be carried into the outer world again in a dead 
sister's coffin and lowered into a grave, or you 
may have the maneuvers of a little girl who is 
sent on errands to a certain house and who is 
afraid of the dog that lives there. The question is 
merely whether you can interest the reader in 
what befalls the convict or the little girl. The 
action in the short story must differ from that in 
the chapter only in that it must be able to work 
up to a culmination of interest which is virtually 
final ; in the chapter story the action reaches a 
resting-place at the end of the chapter; in the 
short story the action stops for good. 

After the body comes the climax, the point 
toward which the narrative has been moving 
from the very first. The climax is the part of 



54 Hozv to Write Short Stories 

the story which satisfies the reader's curiosity, 
puts his fears at rest or kills his hopes. In the 
case of the young man with the ready fists the 
climax comes, not when he wins or loses the fist 
fight, but when he wins or loses in that greater 
struggle of which the fight is merely an incident. 
In the story of the little girl who is afraid of 
the dog, the climax comes when the child dis- 
covers that the dog has no desire to hurt her 
after all. 

In the chapter from Les Miserables the climax 
comes when Jean Valjean hears dirt falling upon 
his cofiin and believes that he is being buried 
alive. "There are some things stronger than the 
strongest man," says Victor Hugo, "and Jean 
Valjean fainted." This is a very excellent end- 
ing for a chapter but it would not do for a short 
story; the reader must know what happens after 
the man faints, whether or not he was buried 
aHve. If there is only one climax this one must 
settle the main question which has been exciting 
the reader's mind. 

Some years ago I read an early story of Mark 
Twain's in which a young woman poses as a 
man and is raised to a high position in some 
imaginary court. She falls in love and is eager 
to take her own place as a woman and be loved 
as one. Buf there is a law which makes -it 
death for a woman to have been in the position 
the heroine has held so bravely. To declare her- 
self a woman the heroine must die. To retain 
her pose as a man she must forego the joys of 
love and marriage. What shall she do? Mark 



Hoiv to Write Short Stories 55 

Twain solves the problem by remarking that it 
"looked easy" but he finds it isn't and bows 
himself off the stage. The serious writer can- 
not bow himself off the stage when the climax is 
expected. Without the climax the introduction 
and body myist fall flat. 

The ideal climax is unexpected and yet logical 
and convincing when it comes. If your reader 
says, when he has finished your story, "Well, I 
never expected it to turn out like that, but I see 
now that the action was tending toward such an 
ending all the time," you have done w^ell. A sur- 
prise and yet logical ending, that is the cHmax 
to achieve. 

Browning speaks of old age as "the last of 
life, for which the first was made." The climax 
is the last of the story, for which the introduc- 
tion and body were made. If the ending is weak 
or trite or unconvincing the introduction and 
body must fail. Be sure, then, that you have a 
climax, a definite and worthy end to attain, be- 
fore you begin your story. If you begin without 
any definite end in view you will be pretty sure 
to attain nothing, no matter how skillful with 
words and sentences and characters you may be. 

Let me repeat what I have already said : Ar- 
range your material, not in the hope of pleasing 
the editor by conforming to a set of arbitrary 
rules, but so that your narrative will catch the 
interest quickly, hold it firmly and leave the read- 
er definitely amused or startled or impressed. 
Just interesting your reader and giving him an 



5G How to Write Short Stories 

added sensation of horror or amusement or pure 
pleasure, that is all you have to do. 

The editor does not care anything about con- 
struction as construction. He wants manuscripts 
that will hold his readers' interest. If you can 
break the rules of construction and still produce 
a story that will hold the attention from the first 
sentence to the last you need not fear that your 
irregularities will cause you a rejection. But 
remember before you decide to ignore the rules 
that the best material may be spoiled in the use. 
If your good idea doesn't work up into a story 
that catches the interest easily, holds it steadily 
and gives the reader a very definite sensation of 
some kind as it concludes there is very probably 
something wrong with your construction. 



CHAPTER SEVEN 

The Great .Art of Story Writing: Style 

fTlHERE are certain principles underlying the 
-^ construction of a sentence and a paragraph 
just as there are underlying the construction of a 
story or article or poem, a subway or a sky- 
scraper. Again, you must either consciously or 
unconsciously respect the underlying principles 
if your sentence or paragraph is to accomplish its 
purpose. 

If your meaning is always understood, if you 
find that you always lay the emphasis where it 
belongs, if your writing is pleasing, incisive or 
forceful just as you wnsh it to be, then you need 
not worry about the principles of style, even if 
you do not understand them. If you are obscure 
when you had hoped to enlighten, ineffective 
when you had sought to impress what seemed 
to you some valuable truth, tiresome when you 
had intended to be interesting, look up the prin- 
ciples of style and study them until you have a 
working knowledge of them. There are a number 
of good essays, explaining these principles, but 
none, I think, more easy to follow, more usable 
than Spencer's Essay on Style. 

We must be understood ; we must not over-tax 
our reader's mind or his patience ; we must not 
seem to suggest that which is aside from or in- 
imical to our purpose or to emphasize that which 
is unimportant or fail to bring into prominence 



58 Hozv to Write Short Stories 

that with which we wish to impress our reader. 
If we study the principles of style we shall find 
that they are laid down to help us achieve what 
our good common sense tells us we must achieve 
or fail in our larger purposes. Only by respecting 
the principles of style can we hope to produce 
a good result, sentences and paragraphs that 
blend together into a clear and beautiful piece 
of writing, able to accomplish the very end for 
which it was created. 

Our knowledge of the principles of style is to 
aid and not to handicap us in our struggle for 
success. And right here the conscientious young 
writer avoids one error only to fall into another. 
He is so anxious to be correct, elegant, impressive, 
that his style is correct, elegant, impressive and 
his story produces no effect whatever. His style 
as style is above reproach but his story is a fail- 
ure. But let not this discourage the conscientious 
writer. The dress-maker must first learn to turn 
out -gowns that are absolutely according to her 
patterns before, she can produce those that have 
a- grace and charm all their own and that adapt 
themselves perfectly to the figures that wear 
them. Paderewski doubtless learned to play per- 
fectly even scales before he discovered how to 
produce runs which seem like a tiny breeze that 
quickens and deepens into a rushing wind. We 
shall hardly acquire a perfectly satisfactory style 
for story-writing without some practice and a few 
mistakes. 

What is perfection of style in story-writing? 
I think I may confidently reply : Style which is 



Hozv to Write SJiort Stories 59 

so perfectly adapted to the subject matter — 
whether conversation, action, description or what 
not — that the reader is absolutely unconscious of 
it. 

If you are looking through a window at an in- 
teresting scene all that you ask of the glass is 
that it be invisible, that it does not intrude itself 
upon your eyes or your thoughts in any way. If 
you have a seat at the theatre you are not con- 
cerned that the woman in front of you has 
beautiful hair or a majestic figure or an attrac- 
tive hat. All you ask of her is that she eliminate 
herself and her head-gear so that she will not 
come between you and the stage. If you have 
climbed a hill to see a much-praised view all you 
ask. of the air is that it be invisible so that you 
may enjoy to the full that which you have come 
to see. So the perfect story style is that which is 
perfectly transparent, which allow^s the action, 
the conversation, wha4;ever makes up the story, 
to stand out, clear and distinct. The perfect story 
style, in other words, effaces itself that the story 
may never for an instant be over-shadowed or 
obscured. 

Booker Washington's ''Up from Slavery" is 
an excellent example of the truth I have just 
been inculcating. Those who know the colored 
race know that the colored man delights in long 
words, rolling syllables, high-sounding sentences. 
Just as his forbears would don any ornament 
given them and wear it proudly, no matter what 
the occasion, so the average colored man seizes 
upon a word that catches his attention and uses 



60 Hozv to Write Short Stories 

it, no matter how. To me there is therefore 
something very touching as well as worthy of ad- 
miration in Booker Washington's clear and simple 
style. He had a story to tell, and no desire to 
shine before his ignorant brethren or to prove 
to the world how well educated he was could 
tempt him to confuse or over-shadow his mes- 
sage. I venture to say that the learned professor 
of any subject would not find "Up from Slavery" 
peurile, and yet any intelligent boy or girl of ten 
could read it with ease and pleasure. The style 
is transparent, allowing the reader to see all that 
the author wished him to see. 

If you have a pathetic story to tell, tell it. 
Don't try to be pathetic. The story will make 
its own appeal if you will only let it. If you are 
watching a grey-haired mother bid farewell to 
her immigrant son as he boards the ship which is 
to carry him away from her, perhaps forever, you 
don't need anyone to explain to you how sad such 
partings are. The mother's bowed grey head, 
her tears, her inarticulate murmurings of grief 
and love will move you far more than all the 
eloquent reflections a bystander could possibly 
make. 

If you have a humorous story to tell, tell it. 
Don't annoy the reader by pointing out how 
funny it is or by trying to be humorous yourself. 
If the story is amusing he'll see that it is without 
your help. Let him enjoy the fun in peace. 

If you have a story of sentiment, adventure, 
business, whatever you have, tell it. Don't talk 
about your material or your characters. Bear in 



Hoiv to Write Short Stories 61 

mind that the perfect style is that which per- 
fectly reveals the story it tells. The minute your 
style gets in your story's way it is not good style, 
no matter how correct it may be. 

"He that loseth his life shall find it," said 
Christ to the Jews who were piously expecting an 
opportunity to aggrandize themselves. In the 
literary world as well as in the spiritual it is 
true that the man who is willing to lose his life 
finds it. When Lincoln gave himself for an 
alien race he was not expecting to become the 
nation's most revered hero. And when he wrote 
a letter to the mother who had lost three sons in 
her country's service the last thought in his mind, 
I am sure, was that his letter would ever be 
quoted as an example of perfect style. 

In Barrie's "Sentimental Tommy" you may 
recall the old woman who each year hired the 
dominie to write her a letter to her daughter in 
Ireland. Each year the message she gave the 
dominie to expand into a letter for her was the 
same : " Dear Kaytherine, if you dinna send ten 
shillings immediately, your puir auld mother will 
have neither house nor hame. I'm crying to you 
f or't, Ka3^therine ; hearken and you'll hear my 
cry across the cauldrifif sea." 

The school-master employed all his skill to 
play upon the girl's sympathy and afifection and 
each year his letter elicited a present of five 
shillings. But when, one year, Tommy asked to 
write the letter, behold the girl sent the whole 
ten shillings ! Why? Because Tommy, instead of 



62 How to Write Short Stories 

trying to be more eloquent than the dominie, had 
used nothing but the mother's own words : 

*'Dear Kaytherine, if you dinna send me ten 
shilHngs immediately, your puir auld mother will 
have neither house nor hame. I'm crying to you 
for't, Kaytherine; hearken and you'll hear my 
cry across thecauldriff sea." 

Tommy loved to write. To draw upon his im- 
agination and his vocabulary was the breath of 
life to him, but he was too good an artist in his 
own light. 

Ah, how many a good story is spoiled in the 
telling, either because the writer is too ignorant 
or too careless to follow the simple rules of style 
or because he cannot resist the tempation to show 
how well he can write ! 



CHAPTER EIGHT 

The Great Art of Story Writing: Adap- 
tation of Style to Material 

TUST a few years ago I read a serial for a 
^-^ minister who wanted to enter the pro- 
fession of authorship. He thought he had written 
a story, but his action was frankly borrowed 
from the Bible, his characters were mere mouth- 
pieces for the expression of religious truths, and 
he had made no attempt to disguise the fact that 
his object was the spiritual uplift of his readers. 
He had failed to rel;pect the rule that a story's 
office is to interest, and his story, though care- 
fully written and showing that the author was to 
be trusted as a religious guide, was a failure. 

I wrote the minister that he must not try to 
write a story and at the same time preach a ser- 
, mon, unless the action of the story could preach 
the sermon without his help. I think I pointed 
out to him as I have to other new writers the 
wonderful power in St. Paul's, "This one thing 
I do." 

The minister replied that he had written his 
serial for a succession of Sunday night services 
and had then conceived the idea of selling it as 
a story. He said he realized the force of my ar- 
guments and he would hereafter not attempt to 
turn a sermon into a story. Today this man is 
selling to the "big" magazines. He writes stories 



64 Hoiv to Write Short Stories 

and he writes articles and he sells both. If he 
writes a story his style is the story writer's style, 
swift, vivid, direct. If he writes an article he is 
concerned with the truths he wishes to enforce : 
he is persuasive, earnest, sometimes compelling 
and always convincing. I've never heard him 
preach a sermon but I'd like to. I understand^ 
that he holds a high place in his denomination. 
Respecting the truth that a story's office is, to 
interest and the rule that the author's style must 
always adapt itself to his subject matter has not 
made him fail as a clergyman and a reformer. 

Another clergyman, who is very much in earn- 
est and who would gladly work hours on an 
address if by so doing he could help any member 
of his flock or any department of his church, 
once addressed his Sunday School in my hearing. 
The lesson was about St. John and alluded to 
the Island of Patmos. The pastor began his talk 
by remarking that Patmos was ''one of the ethno- 
logical islands of the Egean Sea." Well, I'd 
been brought up on the Bible and I'd heard in- 
numerable sermons and I'd been to college, and 
I'll confess I didn't know what the minister was 
trying to tell us. I think I'm pretty safe in 
asserting that the bright boys of sixteen or seven- 
teen whom he was so desirous of uplifting didn't. 
If you are writing for children use words a child 
can understand. You can't hold any reader if 
he doesn't understand you. Adapt your material 
to your audience and your style to your material. 

I had the honor of having Tahan (as a white 
man, Joseph K. Griffis), the Indian lecturer and 






Hoiv to Write Short Stories 65 

writer, ask me to give him an opinion on his first 
printed story. It began : 

"The trees had leafed sixteen times since Tsilta first 
opened her eyes in her father's tepee. Her full rounded 
form was that of a young antelope that dances in the 

sunshine when the grass is green and tender 

Red Scar was gaunt, wrinkled and ugly and had two 
wives." 

You will not wonder that after pointing out a 
few minor irregularities I added : "But only a 
person who was looking for flaws could find any 
fault in your style. It is well adapted — perhaps 
I might better say, perfectly adapted — to the 
subject matter. Your figures are well chosen 
and in every case appealing." 

Tahan replied that I was not severe enough 
and ended his letter, "With good heart-thoughts, 
Chief Tahan." 

Before my criticism of the short story had 
caught up with him as he moved from place to 
place on his lecture circuit Tahan had sold his 
first book. He has unusual material, it is true, 
but I fancy that the charm of his Indian imagery, 
so perfectly adapted to this material, has a very 
great deal to do with his immediate success in 
the profession of authorship. Suppose he'd 
begun his story, 

"Tsilta was sixteen years of age." 
And what if he'd signed his letter, "Yours sin- 
cerely, Joseph K. Griffis" ! 

My style in my story, then, must be adapted 
(1) to story writing, (2) to the reader's tastes 
and intelligence, (3) to my story material. 



66 Hozv to Write Short Stories 

\Some years ago I ran across a young girl whose 
companionship was eagerly sought, no matter 
in what environment she happened to be. A 
little later I spent a summer traveling about with 
her and then I discovered her secret. We stayed 
at a farm-house, and she helped the farmer's^ 
wife sort peaches, talked fertilizers with the 
farmer and eagerly discussed agricultural schools 
with the farmer's son. Then we went to a hotel, 
where among other guests were a college athlete, 
an Episcopalian clerg^'man and his wife, a little 
girl of ten and an old lady who was rarely able 
to go out. In the same day my companion played 
"jacks" with the little girl, went swimming with 
the student, discussed theology and how to inter- 
est young boys in church work with the minister, 
took a hand at whist to help the minister's wife 
make up a game and held worsted for the old 
lady. And each one of the five found her de- 
lightful. Now if my girl had expected the big 
student to play "jacks," or had insisted that the 
little girl spend her time crocheting or had tried 
to talk theology with the minister's wife or make 
the minister play whist or had suggested that 
the old lady go out in the hot sun to watch her 
swim, she would not have won such golden 
opinions. If she had giggled at the minister and 
the old lady, looked shocked Vv^hen the minister's 
wife proposed whist, and assumed a dignified, 
e!der'y manner while pretending to swim and 
p'ay "jacks" she would very probably not have 
been sought as a companion a second time'N By 



H 



Hozv to Write Short Stories 67 

adapting herself to the person she was with and 
the matter in hand she was herself interesting. 

If you are flippant when you should be grave, 
stiff when you should be easy and graceful, 
slangy when your subject matter demands pure 
English or if you never give a thought to the 
reader for wdiom your story is intended, you will 
spoil your material, no matter how carefully you 
have chosen it or how correct your construction 
may be. 



CHAPTER NINE 

The Great Art of Story Writing: The 
Element of Suspense — Viewpoint 

WHEN we were children we had an aui>t 
who used to tell us delightfully terrible 
stories. She told them so well that I — the small-' 
est of the group — could rarely be induced to 
remain a quiet listener until the crisis was passed. 
"Did he die, Aunt Ruth?" I would burst out. 
"'Did he die?" just as the others Were most eager 
for her to go on. And I would insist with loud 
wails and many tears that I at once be told the 
worst or the best. 

The other children insisted on not knowing 
whether the hero lived or died until the proper 
time and nightly threatened me with ejection 
and exclusion from further story-tellings if I 
wouldn't "keep still." They did not know any- 
thing about construction or climax but they did 
know that if they learned too soon how the story 
came out their pleasure was spoiled. It was this 
very element of suspense which my small mind 
was unable to bear that made the joy of the 
story-telling for them. 

The great art of story-telling lies in the skill- 
ful handling of the element of suspense. If there 
is no suspense or if it is relieved too soon the 
story cannbt hold the interest, and, as we have 
agreed, the peculiar office of the story is to in- 
terest. 



Hozv to Write Short Stories H') 

I was reading Trollope's "Barchester Towers" 
the other day and finding myself a Httle bored 
when I came upon this : "But let the gentle reader 
be under no apprehension whatever. It is not 
destined that Eleanor shall marry either Mr. 
Slope or Bertie Stanhope." -Trollope, having 
relieved the reader's mind about Eleanor's mar- 
riage proceeds to explain his feelings regarding 
the element of suspense in story writing. He 
says he believes in perfect confidence between the 
author and the reader and he condemns the in- 
sincerity of the art which spends itself in creat- 
ing fears only to destroy them. And then he adds 
the following, which, I think, proves Trollope 
wrong and the accepted authorities on story- 
writing right : ^ 

'*When we have once learned what was the picture 
before which was hung Mrs. Ratcliffe's solemn curtain 
we feel no further interest about either the frame or 
the veil. 

"And then how grievous a thing it is to have the 
pleasure of your novel destroyed by the ill-considered 
triumph of a previous reader ! 

" 'Oh, you needn't be alarmed for Augusta ; of course 
she accepts Gustavus in the end!' 

"'How very ill-natured you are, Susan!' says Kittie, 
with tears in her eyes. 'I don't care a bit about it 
'now !' " 

Let the writer who insists upon anticipating 
his climax, who believes, like Trollope, that it is 
wise to take the reader into his confidence, read 
this same "Barchester Towers" and then read a 
novel by some author who believes in suspense, 
for example, Charles Reade. Such a reading may 
perhaps disclose why Trollope is found today 



70 How to Write Sliort Stories 

only in the public libraries and on the shelves 
of the litterateur while Reade is still read as 
eagerly as when he first wrote his "Never to 
Late to Mend" and ''The Cloister and the 
Hearth." 

How can I maintain the suspense and still be 
sincere, not permit my reader to understand 
whither events are moving and yet not wilfully 
deceive him? By using the same point of view 
all the way through your short story or, in the 
novel, your chapter. 

What is meant by viewpoint in story writing? 
I think I should hardly be exaggerating if I said 
that I have been asked this question a thousand 
times : What is meant by viewpoint ? 

Your point of view is merely the point or the 
place from which you view an object or a land- 
scape or a constantly changing scene. A farmer 
stands in his barn-door and looks straight ahead 
of him. From his point of view he can see the 
chickens in the chicken-yard, the barn-yard with 
its group of cows, the farm-house and his wife 
moving about before the kitchen windows, but 
he cannot see himself as he stands in the open 
barn-door or the building which forms his back- 
ground. His wife, from her point of view, can 
see the chickens and the cows and her husband 
and the barn, but she cannot see herself or the 
farm-house. The two are not very far apart but 
the point of view of the one is quite distinct from 
that of the other. 

Change from the physical to the mental point 
of view and you will know what the editors and 



Hozu to Write SJiort Stories 71 

critics mean by viewpoint in the story : To the 
farmer the house seems comfortable, cheery, a 
place of refuge to which he may go after his 
hard day's work. He thinks of his wife as a 
happy woman. He guesses that she is grateful 
she has not been obliged to go out into the cold 
spring air and the heavy spring mud. He says 
to himself that Mary must be glad to be away 
from her old noisy, inconvenient home and mis- 
tress of his up-to-date, well-equipped house. He 
imagines her rapid movements mean that she is 
hurrying with the last of her tasks so she may be 
free to make him comfortable as soon as he 
comes in and then have supper ; she'll be anxious 
to know how he made out with his first plowing 
■ of the year. 

To the wife the barn looks aggressively big 
and modern. She wonders how much money her 
husband spent upon his new silo at the left of 
it and whether he really needed the extension he 
has had built at the right side. She wants a 
trip to the city or to town or the dear old farm- 
house or anywhere away from this dreary place 
where she has spent such a lonely winter. She 
wants to talk about the little village church, the 
neighbors, the new fashions, her old home, a 
thousand things that are quite outside the 
farm life and its humdrum interests. The hus- 
band and wife are living in very close relation 
and they have the same environment yet their 
mental or spiritual points of view are quite dif- 
ferent. 

Suppose I want to tell a story about this man 



72 How to Write Short Stories 

and wife, my object being to show how the happi- 
ness of the young couple was put on a firmer bas- 
is, the wife learning to appreciate the husband's 
industry and ambition as well as his love and care 
for her, the husband coming to realize that the 
wife has desires and needs beyond those of her 
healthy young body. If I am to produce ^his 
result and yet surprise the reader when I have 
accomplished my task I must not reveal the 
thoughts of both of my characters except as 
their words and actions may reveal them. I can- 
not let the reader see into the mind of each and 
yet surprise him when one or the other reveals a 
state of mind which is necessary to the other's 
well-being or happiness. Only by using the 
viewpoint of but one of my characters can I sus- 
tain^ the suspense, which, we have seen, is the 
great factor in holding interest. 

Whose point of view shall I choose? Obviously 
the one which will permit of the greater sus- 
pense and the more complete surprise. If a mis- 
understanding arises between the husband and 
wife and the husband soon discovers that the 
wife's irritability and unreasonableness are 
merely tired nerves and he forms a plan to give 
her the rest and change she needs ; and if to the 
wife the misunderstanding looms large and im- 
movable, I shall choose the wife's point of view 
rather than the husband's. The greater suspense 
and hence the greater surprise and rehef must 
be the wife's, and therefore I must choose the 
wife's point of view if I am to give the reader 



Hozv to Write Short Stories 73 

as much as possible of suspense and relief and 
surprise. 

In stories of sentiment, of "heart interest," 
the viewpoint of some character is for obvious 
reasons wise. In a story of adventure, where 
there is no effort to stir the passions or affections 
of the reader, the general point of view may be 
used ; that is, the story may be told as it occurs 
without allowing the reader to see into the mind 
of any one of the characters except in a general 
way. But the element of suspense must never for 
a moment be sacrificed. If you have two oppos- 
ing parties you must give the action as only one 
party acts it or sees it occur. If you change 
from party to party you will destroy or weaken 
the suspense and so destroy or weaken the in- 
terest. 

I once heard a clergyman urge his congre- 
gation to look at a certain truth "from a real 
point of view." All points of view are real, the 
clergyman's no more so than that of hearers who 
did not agree with him. What we see from our 
point of view may not be real but our viewpoint 
is real enough. Think of your character's view^- 
point as real. Don't let your child character see 
what your admired pastor or college professor 
or great-aunt would see in a situation. Don't let 
your street urchin think thoughts that require a 
knowledge of mechanics or psychology or hy- 
gienics. Don't have your woman of the world 
as guileless as your carefully reared and tenderly 
protected seventeen-year-old sister. 

In story-writing the clergyman's appeal would 



Tdt How to Write Short Stories 

have had some meaning. Let the reader see the 
scene and the action from a real point of view. 
Be sincere, in other words, in the handling of 
your viewpoint. Know the character whose 
viewpoint you use and then give the story as 
he lives it, true to the mind and heart and train- 
ing you have given him, no matter where, such 
fidelity may lead you. 

Whose mind do I want the reader to assume as 
he follows the action of my story? That of the 
chief actor, that of the person the chief actor 
wishes to defeat or to win to his way of thinking, 
that of a bystander who has nothing personal at 
stake but who is keenly interested in what is 
going on and the final issue? Whose mind do 
I want the reader to assume : That of a normal, 
reasonable man, with correct judgment and a 
healthy conscience? Of a criminal whose soul 
is warped by sin and fierce brooding over real 
or fancied wrongs? Of an egotist who can't 
see anyone's rights or happiness "or suffering 
but his own? Of a little child whose ''bad" and 
''good" are so closely allied that they seem only 
different phases of a healthy development? Of 
a madman? Whatever viewpoint I choose I 
must never for a moment forget it or deliberately 
cast it aside or confuse it with my own. 

Margaret Deland has a character who, when 
another person's faults are discussed, is pretty 
, sure to say : "I can see his side of it," or "her 
side of it," as the case may be. Showing John's 
side of it is what we mean by using John's point 
of view. Make the reader see John's side of it 



How to Write Short Stories 75 

and he'll want what John wants. If you can 
make him want what John wants he won't lay 
your story down until he has found out whether 
John obtains his desire or not. In order to hold 
the interest, then, all I have to do is to make the 
reader see the opening situation as it looks to 
John, plan with John, hope with John, suffer with 
John and be in suspense with John until the very 
end of the story. Showing John's side of it, 
how things looked to John, that is all there is 
to telling a story from John's viewpoint. 

Viewpoint is an important factor in story- 
telling. Unless you have a natural appreciation 
of how to keep the reader's sympathies alive 
and warm and how^ to maintain suspense you 
cannot afford to close your ears to what the 
authorities say about view^point. There is noth- 
ing which will more quickly destroy the value 
of your plot idea or the charm of your style than 
carelessness or insincerity in the matter of view- 
point. 



CHAPTER TEN 

The Great Art of Story Writing: 
Characterization ' 

r INHERE is a very readable story about a 
-^ gingerbread boy who having been baked 
came to hfe, ran away from the woman who had 
made him and proceeded to have many exciting 
adventures. If your readers are very young and 
not very exacting in their demand for adventure 
you may succeed in holding the interest and still 
have only a gingerbread hero. And, if your 
adventure is sufficient novel and exciting, you 
may have adult readers and hold their interest 
and still have found nothing more lifelike out of 
which to make your hero than good hard white 
dough. But you can't interest the intelligent 
mature reader in the hopes of a dough man or 
in his-tears or his love-making. In your story of 
sentiment your characters must be human, alive, 
real. 

When I was a young girl I used to see a great 
deal of a man and wife of very different temper- 
aments, both of whom had the story-telling habit. 
The man lived on a very lofty plane, far up above 
ordinary persons like I was, and he was utterly 
incapable of seeing the little details that play so 
large a part in most lives. His stories always had 
a point, but they never thrilled or moved me, and 
after I had heard them once I had no desire to 



Hozi^ to Write Short Stories 77 

hear them again. His wife, on the other hand, 
missed nothing that was human. If she told a 
story about an old lady the old lady instantly be- 
came alive. She showed me the small brown 
house where the old lady lived, the green box 
hedge above which her white head appeared now 
and then to the passers-by as she moved about in 
her old-fashioned garden. She had remembered 
the woman's odd little accent and her frequent 
gestures and she reproduced them. And so the 
old lady in the brown house with the old-fash- 
ioned garden shut in by a green hedge became 
real to me, and I could sigh for her . and laugh 
over her and be tranquilly happy with her as my 
friend depicted her. Whether the character was 
an old lady or an over-grown boy or a frail baby- 
girl or a practical, middle-aged man made no 
difference. He or she was always interesting be- 
cause each was revealed by the aid of small 
details that made each quicken into life. The 
mannerisms, individual expressions, habits of 
thought and speech revealed the inner life of 
the characters. And I used to beg for what the 
wife called her ''foolish little stories" and ask 
her to tell them to my friends, and I could have 
heard them a hundred times with keen enjoy- 
ment. 

I have thought a great deal about this matter 
of characterization and I have come to the con- 
clusion that it's largely knowing what details to 
use that makes the difference between char- 
acters that are real and vivid and those that are 
just brown or white dough. 



78 Hozv to Write Short Stories 

Do you know a picture of a little boy with a 
hollow in the back of his neck, kneeling and say- 
ing his prayers? If you do and you've ever 
loved a little boy and you are a woman you've 
wanted to kiss that hollow. It took an artist 
to notice that when a little boy stoops his head 
he makes a hollow in the back of his neck and 
that women have loved that hollow since women 
and children were. 

Take one of Margaret Deland's sketches of Dr. 
Lavendar : Dr. Lavendar is old and he sleeps 
little. He does not want to annoy his house- 
keeper by rising before it is light so he lies awake, 
in the early dawn, watching the familiar objects 
in his room become visible one by one and plan- 
ning for the good of his people. You know that 
old persons are wakeful early in the morning and 
that a tired housekeeper doesn't like to rise long 
before it's necessary and that most women hate 
to have a man knocking about a house before 
they're up and that the objects in a room become 
visible one by one as dawn approaches. But did 
you ever think of making an old man and his 
housekeeper and their home real and vivid by 
using this knowledge? 

Take another of Margaret Deland's characters. 
Dr. King: You were brought up in the country 
or you've been there often on your summer vaca- 
tions ; but would you have thought to have had all 
the doctor's old patients address him as "Willy 
King" and would you have had the doctor as 
he rode along an unfrequented country road 
dangle his foot comfortably over the side of his 



Hozv to Write Short Stories 79 

buggy? How real these little familiar touches 
make Margaret Deland's character ! 

Study Lucy in ''Love Me Little, Love Me 
Long." Can't you see her? She is so dainty, so 
utterly clean and fresh and sweet physically and 
spiritually, so incapable of being anything but a 
lady even when she tries ! Lucy is fine and deli- 
cate, in her sense of humor, in her perception 
of shams, in her high-bred snubs, in her loving. 
Reade knew ''a perfect lady" and a womanly 
woman when he saw them, and he combined the 
two in Lucy Fountain. No matter what she is 
doing, no matter whom she is talking to, no 
matter what her environment, Lucy is always her- 
self, always womanly, always dainty and sweet, 
always a lady. Only by careful attention to de- 
tails could Reade have created so charming and 
convincing a character as Lucy Fountain. 

Take a scene from "Pam". Pam is an odd girl 
and she has an odd companion, a monkey, which 
she has loved and lived with since she was a 
small child and whose mournful eyes sometimes 
suggest her own. Lonely little Pam finds great 
comfort in her monkey. 

Pam's mother is not married, and since Pam's 
father is devoted to her mother and the mother 
is ideally happy, and since Pam knows a great 
many married couples who are neither happy 
nor devoted, the girl decides that she will not 
marry. She makes it a principle not to marry. 

When Pam is still very young she falls in love. 
She is loved in return but her lover is already 
engaged to a woman who can aid him greatlv in 



cO Hozv to Write Short Stories 

a worldly way and poor little Pam is not at all a 
good match. 

The lover decides to give up the other woman 
and marry Pam ; but Pam ref usesyto be married. 
She admits her love but explains that she does 
not believe in marriage. Of course the selfish 
lover sees his chance to help himself politically 
and socially and still have the girl of his heart : 
He proposes to marry his duchess' daughter — and 
make Pam his mistress. 

Now Pam. had meant merely to omit the mar- 
riage ceremony. She had intended to be abso- 
lutely true to her lover and that he should be 
absolutely true to her. The relation was to be 
as pure and as final and as open as though 
sanctified by the marriage vow. 

The girl declines the man's second oflfer. But 
she cannot help loving him and she goes to the 
station to see him ofT as he takes the train back 
to his fiancee. 

The story ends with - little Pam, the train 
having pulled out, standing desolate upon the 
platform, zvith her monkey in her arms! 
. Could any other ending have been as pathetic 
and convincing and withal as impressive in its 
teaching as this picture of Pam with only a 
monkey to comfort her? 

Let no writer think that character drawing is 
mere careful attention to details. The details 
are important only as they suggest that which is 
important, namely, the inner life of the character, 
and as they help to make up a perfect and con- 



Hozv to JVritc Short Stories SI 

vincing whole. If there were nothing to Lucy 
but her daintiness and good manners and nothing 
to Pam but her mournful eyes and her monkey 
we should not care very much about either. 

In "The Awakening of Helena Richie" Mrs. 
King asks her husband to bring her some sachet 
powder from the city and he forgets it. How 
can such a small incident reveal a character's 
inner life? Dr. King greatly admires Mrs. 
Richie, who among other charms, as Mrs. King 
has noted, has "a sort of fragrance about her " 
Mrs. King, practical, inclined to scold, not very 
attractive in person or manner, envies Mrs. 
Richie her charm and is vaguely unhappy in 
noting its effect upon the doctor. Isn't her ask- 
ing her husband to bring her sachet powder that 
she too may emanate -'a. kind of fragrance" en- 
lightening? And doesn't it some way soften our 
hearts towards Mrs. King? And when the 
husband, who had intended to take dinner with 
Mrs. Richie's "brother" and bring h^r news of 
him, is almost elbowed out of Lloyd's house and 
comes home without the powder, is not that not 
only convincing but very significant? A man's 
mind can't be filled with one woman and he 
remember the little wants of another. Mrs. 
Deland does not tell us that Dr. King is in love 
with Mrs. Richie and that Martha is becoming 
jealous. She does not have to tell us. We see 
the situation by means of a hundred little details. 

Sometimes a writer fails in characterization — 
and in keeping alive the "story interest" too — 
because he is too lazy or too careless to give the 



82 Hoiv to Write Short Stories 

hard work necessary to bring these small but 
significant details out. Sometimes he fails be- 
cause he has not the power to see the details. In 
order to depict one must see, either with the eye 
or the mind. You can't get out of your brain 
what is not there. The most active imagination, 
say the psychologists, cannot originate an idea. 
It can combine old ideas into a new one. It can 
develop an old idea into a seeming new one. But 
it cannot make something out of nothing. If you 
go through life with your spiritual eyes shut you 
cannot hope to find plenty of good material in 
your mind when you wish to cjepict character. 

If you have never seen people as they are be- 
neath the surface, have never entered into their 
hopes and fears and experienced with them their 
triumphs and defeats, never been able to break 
away from the boundaries of your own heart and 
mind and soul, you can hardly depict character 
well. You can perhaps write excellent fiction, 
adventure, business, detective, mystery, but you 
cannot depict character and you cannot write 
stories of sentiment. 

Characterization is important, not only in hold- 
ing the interest, but because it is through our 
characters that we make our higest appeal and 
our most lasting impressions. If you want to 
produce stories that go to the heart '-of your 
reader, that make him laugh and weep and cry 
out that he will be a better man, stories that 
can stir a hardened woman so that she will start 
out to find the child she has deserted or that will 
send a thoughtless bov or girl "back home," vou 



Hoiv to Write Short Stories 83 

must have vivid, convincing characterization. 
You must have, not statues or carefully painted 
pictures or pieces of dough fashioned to simulate 
human creatures, but real people ; you must have 
breathing, suffering, sinning, loving, living per- 
sonalities. 



CHAPTER ELEVEN 

The Great Art of Story Writing: Plots 

IVrO matter how interesting and novel your 
-^^ characters, no matter how beautiful and 
unique your setting, no matter even how m.uch 
fresh and pleasing action you may have gathered 
together, you have not the material for any kind 
of a story unless you have a plot. Yet many an 
enthusiastic young author sits down to write a 
story without being at all sure that his "idea" 
embodies plot material. 

Plot, as has been explained a great many times, 
means an obstacle to be overcome or one force 
at war with another ; it means something definite 
to he accomplished, in other words. If my "idea" 
does not furnish me with this something it is 
not a plot idea or at least it is not a fully de- 
veloped plot idea. 

I think one cause for the young writer's mis- 
takes in choosing his material is that, having 
been told to go to life for it, he expects to find 
plot ideas, ready to use, awaiting his keen eye. 
Now plots are a good deal like gold nuggets. 
They are plentiful enough, if one knows where 
to look for them, but they cannot be picked up 
by the basketful, ready to sell. The man who 
wants to get gold out of a mine must know, not 
only where there is* a mine but also how to get 
hold of the gold and how to put it into shape to 
carry away. 



Holu to Write Short Stories 85 

If my raw material does not give me some tiling 
definite to be accomplished, either an obstacle to 
be overcome or two forces at war for a definite 
prize, then, however fresh and genuine it may 
be, it is not yet ready to use in a story ; it is not 
yet plot. If I am sure of its value my first task 
must be to break part of it away, to add to it. 
to remold it so that it is plot and ready for my 
story. 

Let me illustrate : Oliver Wendell Holmes 
finds among his patients a person who has an 
antipathy, that is, has definite physical symptoms 
in the presence of a certain class of objects. This 
suggests a story but there is no plot in the dis- 
covery. Holmes' mind plays about the situation 
and he finally hits upon the question : What 
would happen if a man had an antipathy, not to 
pigs or the fragrance of violets or the sound of a 
violin, but to women? Now the author is nearer 
to plot but still he has nothing definite to he 
accomplished. Finally he conceives of a young 
man who is obliged to live as a recluse because 
he cannot stand the presence of a woman and 
because if he mingles in human society he must 
naturally run across women. The young man is 
not very happy. In order to be made happy he 
must be able to overcome his antipathy and have 
association with women as other men do. How 
can this be accomplished? Now Holmes has a 
plot idea. When he works out the plan of having 
his hero physically helpless with his house on 
fire and an athletic young woman carrying the 
shrinking man out in her strong arms and love. 



86 How to Write SJiort Stories 

aided by the nervous excitement of the moment, 
casting out the nervous disorder, he has plot, 
fully developed. 

Suppose you are calling on a high-bred, con- 
ventional woman and in the midst of the con- 
versation her seventeen-year-old daughter an- 
nounces that she does not believe in marriage. 
There is no plot in her declaration, that is, not a 
complete plot idea ; but there is the germ of a plot 
idea. The mother flushes a little and then reminds 
the girl that she has an engagement or asks her to 
perform some service which takes her from the 
room or turns her thoughts from the question of 
marriage. You know that as soon as they are 
alone the mother will tell the daughter that such 
a statement as she so boldy made is not good 
form, not good morals and not even safe. You 
are sure that the daughter will be convinced by 
the mother's arguments and that no evil will come 
of the girl's thoughtlessly conceived belief. 

Let your imagination play around the girl's 
declaration: Suppose the mother, still young in 
appearance and very beautiful and "as good as 
gold," is not married to the girl's father. Suppose 
the father is an artist and careless about con- 
ventions and the mother has been brought up by 
a well-born but irresponsible father and the two 
are living together in perfect happiness and with- 
out a care for the world which condemns them. 
Suppose the daughter of such a father and 
mother declares she does not believe in marriage 
and her lover has just had a hard struggle with 
himself before he could ask her to marry hin>and 



Hozv to Write Short Stories ST 

so put behind him the woman who can help him 
attain his ambitions. Ah, now we have some- 
thing very definite to dread ! We have two very 
vital forces at war. Which will win, the belief 
that marriage is not necessary or even right, 
backed up by the man's pleading and the girl's 
ardent love, or the girl's natural purity and 
rectitude which tells her that it can never be 
right for a man to pledge his love openly to one 
woman and live in secret with another? And 
now we have the situation in "Pam" as it is just 
before the story closes and surely a well-develop- 
ed plot. But we've traveled a long vrays from our 
conventional drawing-room with its careful 
mother and very innocent, very ignorant little 
daughter. 

When you are told to go to life for your 
material don't think that all you must do is to 
keep your eyes open and allow your imagination 
to lie dormant. Your imagination is your great 
natural gift. Use it upon what you see. If your 
stories contain only plot ideas that are discovered 
ready to your hand^you will never be a writer of 
strong fiction. You will never produce very much 
that is either fresh or valuable. 

Another mistake of the new writer is to sup- 
pose that because a real experience "seems like 
a story," is like a story, it will furnish him with 
good plot material. If you hear of an experience 
which strongly suggests a story you hgive seen 
in print you have a very excellent reason for not 
using that experience in a manuscript of your 
own. 



88 How to Write SJwrt Stories 

T had an uncle who did not enjoy the restric- 
tions of his father's governing and who ran away 
from home when he was twelve years old. After 
some terrible experiences he succeeded in stow- 
ing away what was left of his poor little body in 
the hold of a sailing-vessel. Fortunately the 
captain's w^ife happened to be accompanying her 
husband on his trip, and she took the waif into 
her cabin and also into her heart. After a while 
the captain, who supposed the child to be an 
orphan, adopted him. It was not until the boy 
was of age that he told the truth and was induced 
to go home and see his mother. Yes, and the 
captain left his adopted son all of his modest for- 
tune, too ! That's a thrilling adventure to hear 
fresh from the lips of the man who has lived it, a 
man you are related to and love. But I couldn't 
make a story out of it for the very simple reason 
that runaways and stowaways and well-to-do men 
who adopt poor boys and mothers who rejoice 
over long-lost sons have all appeared in fiction, not 
once but many, many times. My plot must be, 
not only real plot, fully developed, but it must be 
fresh or seemingly fresh. Even though my 
material has come to me direct from life it will 
not seem fresh and original if similar material 
has been used over and over again by other 
writers. 

T am sure that some writer is eagerly waiting 
for me to come to the end of my paragraph so 
that he can hurl at me that old argument about 
there being nothing new under the sun. The 
man who hates or pretends to hate women is 



Hozv to Write Short Stories 89 

very old in fiction ; it has been used until we are 
all sick and tired of it. But when Holmes thought 
of a high-strung little child receiving a nervous 
shock at the hands of a woman and growing into 
a man who was physically unable to bear the 
presence of a woman he had conceived a variation 
of the woman hater which seems quite fresh, even 
today. "A Mortal Antipathy" stands out by 
itself, no matter how many stories you may have 
read about mei;i who shunned women's society. 

Take "Pam" again : What could be older than 
the man who is loved by two women, one wealthy, 
of noble family and very beautiful, the other 
poor, with no family pretensions, by no means 
able to complete with her rival in physical attrac- 
tions ? But when you have the poor, less striking 
woman not believe in marriage, and when you 
show us convincing reasons for her wishing not 
to marry, you have a fresh situation. "Pam" 
seems very fresh certainly as one reads it. 

There is nothing very fresh in a woman's liv- 
ing with a man she expects to marry later and 
then discovering, when she wishes to marry, that 
the man has grown tired of her. But when 
Margaret Deland conceived of a sweet and 
womanly woman entering into 'illicit relations 
with a lover, because her husband had killed her 
child and would soon "drink himself to death" 
so she would be free to marry again, and this 
woman utterly unable to see that she has com- 
mitted any sin, since she has been so sinned 
against ; and when through the love of three 
others — a middle-aged, conscientious husband, a 



90 Hozv to Write Short Stories 

dreamy young artist who knows nothing of Hfe, 
a Httle boy — and the havoc she works among 
them this woman is brought to acknowledge her 
error and find her soul's peace and later her 
happiness, there was created a fresh situation, 
fresh plot material, a fresh and helpful story. 
'The Awakening of Helena Ritchie" will always 
seem individual, no matter how^ many stroies of 
women who preferred love to morality you may 
bring around it. 

If you are a real artist, if you have the power 
to see a little deeper into life than "the average 
reader" sees, you need not fear because no lurid, 
bizarre, or even striking plot ideas reveal them- 
selves to your eyes. All that is required of you 
is that you have the power to make a definite 
plot seem freshly interesting as you develop it 
into a story. If I w^ere a painter and had a new 
vision of the soul of Jeanne D'Arc I should not 
hesitate to put my vision on canvas because 
artists have been painting Jeanne D'Arc since 
long before I began to handle a brush. My fresh 
point of view would justify my painting, pro- 
vided the view was valuable and the painting- 
good. If I see a situation, however old, as no 
story I know reveals it, I shall not hestitate to 
use it in my own manuscript. 

I have taken my illustrations from novels rather 
than from short stories because novels are more 
easy to locate if the student-writer wishes to 
refer to the story discussed as well as more likely 
to have been read and remembered. All that I 
have said applies to the short story. The office 



Hoiv to Write Short Stories ')l 

of any story is to interest. We cannot hold the 
interest and work with material which is poor 
or tattered and torn from over-handling. What- 
ever we choose in the way of plot let it be worthy 
of the time and thought we must spend upon it 
before we can develop it into a readable narrative. 

We poor critics and advisors to authors are 
often at our wits' end as to how to steer the new 
writer so that he may reach the desired goal. We 
say, ''Study the rules," and the author turns out 
a piece of work which is mechanically perfect 
but which has no originality, no spontaneity, no 
life. We say, "Study the standard authors,'" and 
the writer proceeds laboriously to copy some 
author he admires. We say, "Be yourself," and 
the author joyously concocts something which is 
so unlike anything the editor ever saw before that 
the poor man does not know what to make of it. 
But this should cause us no surprise or conster- 
nation. In story-writing as in other arts the 
worker must struggle through mistakes and very 
definite obstacles in the way of personal likes 
and weaknesses and ideals before he can hope to 
approach perfection. Whether in style, charac- 
terization or plot building our hope of develop- 
ment lies in giving with each story our intelligent 
best. "My own and the best I have," should be the 
young writer's guiding principle as he plans and 
as he writes each story. 

I have chosen the short story to discuss at 
length for several reasons beside the fact that the 
demand for short stories is very great and the 
young writer usually eager to enter this field : 



92 Hozv to Write Short Stories 

The principles which underlie the short story are 
virtually those which govern the article and, in 
a very broad sense, the poem also. Every compo- 
sition should be built up in such a way that it 
quickly catches the interest, holds it and reaches 
some sort of a climax. Each should be so pro- 
portioned that no part seems to over-lap or over- 
shadow the others. Every composition should 
have some definite excuse for being. In each the 
style should be so perfectly adapted to the sub- 
ject matter that the interested reader would be 
puzzled to determine wherein the charm of the 
whole lies. Moreover, the construction of a 
chapter in a long story is exactly the same as 
that of a short story except that in the chapter the 
climax is a resting-place rather than the end of 
the journey; in all but the last chapter a climax 
is reached only that the reader may pause for a 
moment and then start on with added interest 
toward the final goal. 

If you can write short stories that are technic- 
ally satisfactory you can write any prose compo- 
sition you have material for. To the versatile 
young writer, therefore, the mastery of the short 
story is of vital importance. I know of no better 
way to develop a sense of order and harmony and 
an appreciation of purity and sincerity of style 
than by writing short stories. 

Mine, then, and the best I have in each short 
story we produce in our business of writing. 



CHAPTER TWELVE 
Using Acquaintance as Material 

TTX Barrie's ''When a Man's Single" a writer, 
J^ about to be married, discovers that he is 
afraid to enter the unknown state. Instantly it 
occurs to him that his feeling would make an 
article and he hastily jots down, "Man afraid to 
be married." Then, realizing what he has done, 
he exclaims, "God forgive me, I'd made copy out 
of my mother's coffin !" 

The born story writer cannot help seeing copy 
when it lies before him, even though it lie in the 
person of his nearest and dearest or the man 
to whom he owes the greatest respect and the 
truest allegiance of which his heart is capable. 
Let the reader who is not by nature fitted to 
write, who has no impulse to write, hold his hand 
before he begins to cast stones at the poor author, 
big with a new plot or character. Each walk of 
life has its peculiar privileges and temptations 
and it behooves each of us to be as generous to 
the other man's mistakes as we possibly can. But 
the writer who uses any material which comes 
to his hand, regardless of where he found it or 
how much pain its appearing in print would 
cause, is not only selfish to the point of cruelty 
but also a very foolish person. Personal material 
may prove a two-edged sword, dangerous to 



94 How to Write Short Stories 

handle as well as run against in the hand of 
another. 

I once heard a new writer telling a young girl 
about a story he was planning. He had found 
his material in an experience of a very prominent 
citizen of the girl's town. 

"Why, everyone here would know whom you 
meant !" she exclaimed. 

"I suppose they would," the 'writer admitted, 
*'but every one of the standard authors has used 
the experiences of real persons. Look at Shakes- 
peare !" 

''Well, go ahead," answered the girl, who knew 
her townspeople, "but when your book comes out 
you'll wish you were as dead as Shakespeare ^is !" 

Count the cost before you "write up" your 
personal friend, or enemy, and mail your manu- 
script to an editor. No matter how far away 
the used person may be or how unlikely he is to 
see the periodical for which you write you can 
never be sure that he will not read your story or 
article or poem, once you drop it into the mail- 
box. 

A rather amusing experience happened to a 
friend of mine, a young man who has not been 
writing very long but who generally sells what 
he writes. He had a very painful but illuminating 
adventure and thinking it might help some other 
young fellow and incidentally bring him a check 
he wrote it up and sent it to a magazine which 
not a person^he knew took or, he felt pretty sure, 
had ever heard of. He lived in the East and the 
magazine was published in the far West. His 



Hozu to Write Short Stories 95 

manuscript was promptly accepted. A few days 
after the story was published my friend happened 
to answer a ring at his mother's door and was 
eagerly greeted by a bright little boy who said he 
was taking subscriptions for a very excellent but 
not very well known magazine. 

"It has good stories in it !" urged the little boy 
and, opening his sample copy, he disclosed to the 
writer's startled eyes his own story. 

I had a somewhat similar experience when I 
first began to write. I spent a summer in a little 
fishing-hamlet in Canada and of course I found 
some material awaiting me. We were ten miles 
over a rough, mountainous road from the railroad 
and New York seemed thousands of miles away. 
I didn't see a single magazine all the time I was 
in the hamlet, except those I had brought with me 
or had sent to me. I sold my manuscript to the 
Saturday Supplement of the New York Post. 
No one in my little hamlet. I felt sure, read the 
New York Post. 

Shortly after my article appeared I received 
a- caustic, though still friendly letter from the 
daughter of the woman with wdiom I had boarded 
and whom I had included in my sketch. She said 
the hamlet was busy reading and re-reading my 
contribution and was greatly excited at finding 
itself in print. Well, I had laughed a little at 
some of the hamlet's peculiarities but as I had 
also shown warm affection and some sincere ad- 
miration for the fisherman and their wives I 
believe I was finally forgiven; and I'd venture 
back to the hamlet tomorrow if I could get to 



96 How to Write Short Stories 

it. But discovering that the New York papers 
were read in a Httle village in Canada where the 
mail came in only twice a week convinced me 
that print travels far and that a writer who sells 
his manuscript can never feel sure that it will not 
be read by the very person he especially desires 
should not see it. 

The editor of a New York magazine with 
which I was at one time connected received a 
pitiful letter from a girl in the far West who told 
him that she liked his periodical very much indeed 
but begged that he would stop "scandling" her. 
The astonished editor went over his whole issue, 
recently mailed, to try and discover what the 
girl meant. When he could find nothing that ex- 
plained the letter he answered it with a request 
that the girl tell him just where in his magazine 
she had come upon something which seemed to 
reflect upon her. The girl replied that all her 
acquaintances were laughing at her because the 
magazine had made fun of her and again begged 
the editor to leave her in peace. We finally de- 
cided that the subscriber was a little unbalanced 
and had imagined that some story or article or 
picture she had found in her copy was intended 
to ridicule her. But of course it is very possible 
that some contributor had used the poor girl and 
that her townspeople had at once recognized her 
and had not all been kinti enough to refrain from 
amusing themselves at her expense. At any rate 
the incident shows that even when a person is 
not up to the standard mentally he may have a 



Hoi<.' to IV rite Short Stories 97 

heart and may suffer in seeing his weaknesses or 
oddities in print. 

Is it right to take material from the Hfe im- 
mediately about us? Where else should we ob- 
tain it? How can we depict that which we have 
never seen or have seen only dimly and from a 
great distance? Once more let us use our good 
common sense, this time our kindly common 
sense. If we know that our using the experience 
of an acquaintance would cause that acquaintance 
pain or expose him to disrespect or ridicule we 
have no right to use him, merely because we like 
to sell manuscripts or are in need of money. If 
we have a message to deliver and our acquaint- 
ance' experience helps us to deliver it I think we 
have a right to use it even though our acquaint- 
ance may suspect where we found our material 
and be annoyed or angered by our action. We 
have, of course, no right to use that which has 
been told us in confidence if our using it will 
make public an experience the confidant wishes 
kept concealed. 

Again, if we use an acquaintance for the sake 
of making him appear ridiculous or belittling 
him or "paying him back" for some real or 
fancied injury done us we are employing our 
talent for a very mean purpose and deserve to 
have it taken from us and given to someone with 
a better idea of how talent should be used. If 
we use a character because it helps us reveal some 
truth which is of lasting moment to the reader, 
being careful not to reproduce any mental or 
physical peculiarity which will be at once recog- 



98 How to Write Short Stories 

nized in the community where it exists, we are 
quite within our rights and no fair-minded person 
will condemn us or be angry with us because he 
fancies he sees himself reflected in our writings. 
As I said in the preceding chapter, the young 
writer often makes the mistake of thinking he 
must use material in just the form he finds it. He 
tries to photograph what he sees. If he succeeds 
his photograph is at once recognized and he finds 
himself in trouble the minute his story or article 
appears in print. If you are depicting a pitfall 
into which a real man tumbled in order that 
other real men may recognize similar pitfalls 
when they come upon them in real life, there is 
no need for you to show all the first man's physi- 
cal and mental peculiarities so that all his world 
will recognize him. All you need to do is point 
out how such a road and such a manner of travel- 
ling will mean dropping into a ditch or quag- 
mire. The color of the first man's horse or the 
number on his automobile license or the kind of a 
coat he had on is of no moment to the reader and 
should not be reproduced. 

I have alluded to Holmes' "A Mortal Anti- 
pathy" and imagined Holmes as having found 
the germ of his idea in an antipathy of one of his 
patients. I have shown how the germ was per- 
haps developed into the interesting plot idea of 
Holmes' novel. In all of Holmes' writings it is 
easy to trace the physician and the physician's- 
e: periences. But I've never heard Holmes ac- 
cused of abusing professional confidences or 
mak'ng public that which should have been sacred 



Hozv to Write Short Stories 99 

to him. I think the reason is that Holmes knew 
how to reproduce without the aid of a camera. 
He could portray that which was vital to his pur- 
pose and discard or alter the rest past recogni- 
tion. If Elsie Venner had been a real girl with 
Elsie's peculiar weakness and a patient of Dr. 
.Holmes, Holmes would have been inexcusable, 
because his story would have revealed family 
secrets, told in confidence to the trusted family 
physician. The fact that Holmes was a writer 
as well as a doctor would in no way have exon- 
erated him for abusing professional confidence. 
A man has no right to misuse one talent 'because 
he happens to have been given two. Holmes un- 
doubtedly found the material for Elsie Venner in 
his own professional experience or in that of 
some fellow-physician but he was careful to work 
what he found over and over until it was altered 
beyond recognition. 

Is an author ever justified in depicting weak- 
nesses and peculiarities he has discovered in real 
life, when he knows his material will sooner or 
later be traced to the persons who furnished it? 
The mass must always count above the individual 
and even though the individual may suffer I 
think the author should utter his message, if it 
be vital, and shut his ears to the clamor he may 
raise. I suppose many a young idealist has 
tumbled Dickens ofif his pedestal when he learned 
that this loved author did not scruple to use as 
material the weaknesses of his father and mother 
and wife. But let the idealist remember that 
Dickens was not writing *'for fun" or for money, 



100 How to Write Short Stories 

though he undoubtedly did get both fun and 
money out of his work. Always his aim was 
high and pure, to check abuses, to make laziness, 
selfishness, hypocrisy despicable and to exalt 
industry, unselfishness, loyalty, real piety. The 
fact that Dickens' books have been more success- 
ful as sermons than as farces should justify him 
in the eyes of those who can see beyond the 
rights of the individual to the needs of the race. 

And' those we love best ; shall we put them into 
our manuscripts, expose that which is so sacred 
to us to a staring, curious public? In "Margaret 
Ogilvie" the mother exults that her son cannot 
**keep her out" of his books. What higher com- 
pliment could her son pay her than that she was 
so constantly in his thoughts and withal so inter- 
esting he could not "keep her out"? 

When "Margaret Ogilvie" first came out a man 
who greatly admired Barrie said to me that the 
sketch seemed almost sacrilege. A minute later 
he pulled the book out of his pocket. 

"Why, I thought we had your copy !" I said 
in surprise. . 

"You have one," the man replied, laughing a 
little shamefacedly, "but I went into a book store 
and bought another, I felt homesick without 
'Margaret Ogilvie' !" 

It's worth giving one's mother to the public 
to have another man homesick for her. 

In deciding what personal material we can use 
we can hardly do better than guide ourselves by 
sound business principles : We should not traffic 
in that which is not our own or which was ob- 



How to Write Short Stories 101 

tained by unfair means ; we should not wantonly 
profit at the expense of others. Our business, 
however small and insignificant, should be con- 
ducted with a view to the general welfare rather 
than with a selfish determination to get out of 
it all we possibly can for our own profit and 
pleasure. 



CHAPTER THIRTEEN 

The Author s Personal Responsibility 

TF in any previous chapter I have given the 
-^ impression that only good manuscripts sell 
I have said what I did not mean to say and what 
is certainly not true. Poor" stories and articles and 
poems sell just as poor cloth and poor furniture 
and poor candy do. There are always people 
who would rather pay one dollar for a poor 
article than two dollars for one four times as 
good as well as people who really like cheap 
things. Moreover, it is never difficult to find" a 
man who w^ould rather have a bottle of cheap 
whiskey than a loaf of good bread. If your 
manuscripts are good of their kind they may 
be of a very poor kind and sell. Also, if they 
are of a kind to satisfy a poor class of readers 
they may be verv poor, even of their kind, and 
sell. 

If only good manuscripts sold the author would 
not have to worry at all about the question of 
his personal responsibility as an artist and a pro- 
ducer. If he could sell his manuscripts he could 
then feel sure that they were worthy of publica- 
tion. But since there are readers who prefer that 
which is weak or vicious and publishers wilHng 
to make money by gratifying weak and vicious 
tastes the burden of responsibility lies heavy 



How to Write Short Stories 103 

upon the shoulders of the author. The fact that 
the public likes Mutt and Jeff and that these 
gentlemen have no difficulty in finding purchasers 
does not excuse the creator of Mutt and Jeff for 
bringing so much vulgarity and ugliness into ex- 
istence. 

There are two kinds of responsibility which the 
author cannot escape, his responsibility as an 
artist and his responsibility as a w^ide-spreading 
influence for good or evil. 

There are hundreds of young writers, sound to 
the core morally and eager to do good in the 
world, who seem to have no appreciation of the 
meaning of "art for art's sake." They lack what 
we may call the workman's conscience. Many 
an ignorant fellow^ plowing his furrow straight 
or planing his board smooth, is far more of an 
artist than these careless writers, content with 
*'any old way" which will pass with the editor. 
To have my work as nearly perfect as I can make 
it just because it is my work: this is the spirit 
which gives any task dignity and which should 
surely pervade the mind of the writer as he 
produces that which he hopes will have lasting 
existence. 

A few years ago a friend brought to my home 
an old English poet who was writing for the 
American magazines. We were having .a very 
delightful evening w^hen someone happened to 
mention a poem of the Englishman's which had 
recently appeared in Miinsey's Magazine. Mun- 
sey's editor, it seemed, had cut out two of the 
poet's stanzas. As he told us about the cutting 



104 Hozv to Write Short Stories 

the old man's sorrow and wrath became so great 
that he had great difficulty in controlling him- 
self and, realizing his condition, he hastily ended 
his call. The acceptance, the check and the see- 
ing of his poem in print had in no way compen- 
sated this true artist for what seemed to him the 
mutilation of his work. 

To the very practical man the poet's suffering 
may look like mere egotism and morbid sensi- 
tiveness about one's own production. But it was 
something higher than that. Back of art there 
is always the great Artist, the supreme Idealist, if 
I may so express myself. The true artist, there- 
fore, whether he be consciously religious or not, 
reverences his ideal. He cannot help but suffer 
in seeing the work which he had labored to render 
perfect taken from or added to or altered in any 
way. 

To the true artist it is a solemn thing to re- 
produce life. To depict God's sky as it never 
was or will be seems to the artist-painter a crime 
against the Creator — or, he may tell you, against 
art. A poem or a story that gives a distorted 
representation of human nature should seem to 
the author a crime, not only against art but 
against the Creator of men and the One who 
took upon Himself the form of a man. Whether 
we call ourselves workmen or artists, therefore, 
we are inexcusable if the product of our hand 
is less than our reverent best. 

When we have satisfied our workman's con- 
science we have still to face' the question of our 
moral responsibility ; for, as I have said, we can- 



Hozk.' to Write SJwrt Stories 105 

not expect the public or the pubHsher to reject 
/ what we offer merely because it is not good as a 
moral influence. 

All of us have heard or read of boys who were 
led to leave home by reading stories which made 
^joining a circus or becoming a cowboy or just 
"seeing life" picturesque and delightful. Many 
a girl, we know, has been tempted into trying 
the artist life of New^ York or Paris through 
reading stories which made this life seem roman- 
tic and desirable. On the other hand, Weigle, 
an authority on Sunday School pedagogy, claims 
that the child may be given a distaste for the 
religious life by stories which are *'goody-goody," 
that is, stories which are religiously insincere. 

We do not need any knowledge of psychology 
to convince us of the power of suggestion. The 
boy in our own home dashes into the house and 
demands his skates because he has caught sight 
of another boy joyously gliding over the asphalt. 
We who are older have gone "down cellar" for 
an apple for no better reason than that we hap- 
pened to see somebody else munching one. And 
every housewife knows that it is possible to give 
a person a lasting distaste for a dish by once serv- 
ing it under-cooked or too highly flavored. Our 
common sense must tell us, then, that we are 
not guiltless when we write stories which give a 
false idea of life, which depict evil so that it 
seems good, or good so that it seems flat, naus- 
eous, anything but wholesome and desirable. 

A girl of twelve heard that in China a man 
sometimes commits suicide upon the door-step of 



106 How to Write Short Stories 

his enemy. Coming into an older sister's room 
one winter evening she found the girl laboriously 
working away upon a little dress intended for 
her. The child stood looking on a moment and 
then she snatched the garment out of the patient 
seamstress' hand. "You stop ruining your eyes 
for me !" she commanded excitedly. "You shan't 
kill yourself on my door-step !" 

Men will kill themselves, whether we have in- 
jured them or not. People will read cheap, harm- 
ful stories, whether you and I write them or not. 
But we can see to it that no one reads a harmful 
story of ours,, that no person's moral decadence 
or death lies at our door. 

What shall we write, good, clean humor with 
a healthy laugh in it to leave the reader better 
both physically and morally; sincere pathos 
to sweeten and purify the soul; adventure that 
exalts industry and intelligence and courage and 
makes honor and manly courtesy admirable and 
desirable; or vulgar, debasing horse-play, unreal 
yet depressing tragedies, lurid adventures which 
so confuses the reader that he cannot tell right 
from wrong, courage from foolhardiness, skill 
and good business sense from trickery and dis- 
honesty? 

To return to my figure : What shall we place 
upon our shelves, that which is good, clean, whole- 
some, durable, or that which is lacking in nutri- 
metit, perishable, impure? No inatter how small 
and insignificant our shop may be, if we sell our 
goods, we shall afifect the lives of those who buy 



Hoiv to Write Short Stories 10 7 

of us and of others who never come within our 
doors. 

It seems a solemn thing to write for pubhcation 
when we reaHze how far the printed page can 
travel. There's a certain immortality, too, in 
print. Will Carleton ends one of his best-known 
poems with these lines : 

"Boys flying kites haul in their white-winged birds ; 
You can't do that way when you're flying words. 

Thoughts unexpressed may sometimes fall back dead ; 
But God Himself can't kill them when they're said!" 

Written words are even harder to kill than 
those that are spoken. 



CHAPTER FOURTEEN 

The Editors 

A YOUNG woman who sells her manuscripts 
^^^^ saw the outline for this book. ''Oh," she 
exclaimed, *T wish you'd have circulars about it 
scattered all through the country villages ! Do 
you know, when I began trying to write I didn't 
understand that there were books on authorship ? 
I didn't even know there were magazines on pur- 
pose for writers. I don't suppose you'll believe 
it, but when I was quite a big girl I thought the 
editors wrote all there was in each magazine ! Is 
it any wonder I didn't know how to get a start ?" 
I don't suppose there are very many young girls 
with literary aspirations as unsophiscated as this, 
but I find that a very great many new writers 
have very erroneous ideas about the editors. If 
they could correct these they would not only be 
very much more comfortable in their minds, but 
they would stand a very much better chance of 
succeeding with these same editors. 

I once received a letter from a man who re- 
ferred to the editors as those " whose business 
it is to discourage and whose pleasure to insult 
writers." Now an editor can no more afford to 
make enemies of the writers than a theatrical 
manager can afford to make enemies of the actors 
and actresses. The manager can't keep his 
theatre open unless he has someone to play. 
The editor can't publish- his magazine unless 



Hou' to Write Short Stories 109 

he has someone to write. His business is pro- 
ducing a magazine that the pubHc will think 
worth buying; his pleasure is the finding of 
material which will help to make up such a 
magazine. He should be approached not as a 
gojl in whose hands are the issues of life and 
death, not as a friend who can do you a favor 
if he will, but as a business man. H he rejects 
your offering he does so for just one reason : 
He believes it will be of no help to him in pro- 
ducing the magazine his patrons want. 

"W'hy can't he explain then?" explodes some 
indignant young writer. "How long would it 
take him to WTite a courteous little personal note, 
pointing out why he believes the manuscript 
wouldn't please his readers? I w^ouldn't mind 
getting my stories back if it w^eren't for those 
nasty little rejection slips, which explain noth- 
ing!" 

It doesn't take very long to write one little 
note ; it takes a good deal of time to write fifty or 
a hundred or a thousand. When a busy foreman 
advertises for a boy and he has fifty applicants 
he doesn't, take each one of the forty-nine by 
the hand and explain just why he can't employ 
him ; if the applications are in writing the fore- 
man doesn't spend a whole evening answering 
them. He may be the kindest, most courteous 
man in his city, but he wouldn't consider it a good 
investment of his time to spend it pointing out 
^ the scientific deficiencies of the unsuccessful ap- 
plicants or in explaining wdiy the successful appli- 
cant seemed to him more suited to his needs. 



110 Hozv to Write Short Stories 

If some young woman writer is interrupted in 
her writing or her baking by the ringing of the 
bell and finds a salesman or peddler smiling on 
her doorstep she doesn't take him into her study 
or kitchen and explain just why she doesn't need 
a machine or a cake of soap. If she says courte- 
ously, "Not today !" she feels that she has done 
her whole duty. Why should she let her cake 
burn or her precious idea fly out of the window 
while she is discussing something she doesn't 
want with a person whose only interest in her 
lies in the fact that she may have money to spend ? 
You can't expect a business man to give you very 
much of anything for nothing, w^hether it's time 
or v/riting-paper or sympathy. 

The editor is pretty sure to fend you off with 
rejection slips until he is convinced that he may 
want to "do business" with you, if not just now, 
then at some other time. If he finds that you - 
have taken the trouble to get into sympathy with 
his policy he will usually show his appreciation 
by personal notes, as kindly as they are sincere 
and explanatory. 

I remember a time when two magazines seemed 
to me particularly unapproachable. I had tried 
each a number of times and had had my offerings 
rejected with printed letters that some way 
seemed to hurl me down to the foot of an ice- 
berg, cold, immense, unscalable. Then one day 
I happened upon a copy of a little magazine for 
authors published by- Mr. Hills, and in this was a^ 
letter to contributors, written by the editor of 
one of the two inaccessibles. It explained just 



I 



How to Write Short Stories Hi 

what kind of manuscripts the editor wanted. I 
tried hard to produce that kind. After that the 
editor invariably either wrote me a cordial note 
of acceptance or an equally cordial note, explain- 
ing just why he was returning my manuscript. 

The, second magazine was a "big" one. I had 
sent it only an occasional manuscript; I had a 
kind of horror of those lengthy printed letters of 
rejection. But I happened upon some material 
that I felt might really satisfy the editors. I 
gathered it into three articles and respectfully 
submitted them for examination, and, behold, I 
had called forth a by no means brief personal 
letter ! The editor explained that he had use for 
only a part of the material ; he ofifered me a very 
satisfactory sum for that part, with the under- 
standing that he was to keep the whole series 
and pick out what he wanted, I to be free to use 
what was left over as I chose. I accepted the 
ofifer, supposing of course, that I should have to 
wait until the publication of the available matter 
before I could remold and attempt to market the 
rest. But soon after my check arrived the editor 
sent me all the sheets or parts of sheets he had 
decided not to use and told me I was now^ at 
liberty to proceed with the material as I saw fit. 
I promptly regrouped it and soon had a second 
check almost as large as the first to show for my 
series. 

When next I had occasion to address the editor 
of the inaccessible publication I thanked him for 
his thoughtfulness in returning the left-over 
material at once and told him that I had been 



112 Hozv to IV rite Short Stories 

able to sell it promptly to a certain rival maga- 
zine. He replied, expressing great pleasure in 
the sale. Since that he has not only invariably 
sent me a personal letter with every acceptance 
or returned manuscript .but almost always ac- 
knowledges the receipt of anything I offer him 
with a cordial personal note, expressing a hope 
that my contribution will prove available and 
telling me about how soon I may hope for a 
report. 

I have in my desk a three-page letter in long- 
hand from an editor who not only was willing 
to explain why he couldn't use an article of mine, 
but wanted to convert me to believing just as he 
did about the matter under discussion ! Back of 
the rejection there is always the individual busi- 
ness man, but back of the business man there is 
always a, personality, sometimes suave and some- 
times gruff, but usually, I think, kindly, and never, 
I am sure, a monster of cruelty or ignorance. 

A correspondent wrote me that he understood 
it was impossible to sell manuscripts unless one 
had "a pull" with the editor through sonle friends 
or relatives. Again and again the young writers 
want to know if it's possible to succeed without 
having "a big name." 

I once oft"ered an editor with whom I was 
associated a manuscript of my own. In my office 
work I had tried in every possible way to please 
him and he had shown himself happy to do me 
a personal favor. Ten days after my manu- 
script was submitted I was told that it had been 
accepted. "But," said the editor, "if it hadn't 



How to Write Short Stories 11.3 

been what I wanted I'd have turned it down 
without mercy ! I never allow my personal in- 
terest in a contributor to affect my editorial 
judgment." 

I saw a letter of his to a fellow editor in which 
he stated that he never glanced at the name upon 
a manuscript until he had occasion to address the 
author. 

One day a young man who assisted the presi- 
dent of our concern brought into the office two 
manuscripts which he said had been wTittenvby a 
certain author. Her name is so well-known that 
I think every reader of my book would recog- 
nize it if I gave it. I read the manuscripts, won- 
dered if it could be possible that the young man 
had written them himself and then laid them on 
the editor's desk. There was no name on them 
and I left Billy, the young man, to make his own 
explanation. 

A few hours afterwards the editor tossed the 
two manuscripts on my desk. ''Read those." he 
told me, ''and then guess who wrote them." 

I bent over the manuscripts for a while and 
then glanced up as innocently as I could. "I guess 
," I announced. 

The editor stared at me for a moment, and then 
he laughed. "Oh," he exclaimed, "somebody told 
you !" 

But he was a red-headed editor and after he'd 
thought about the manuscripts a little longer he 
grew angry. "The idea of her sending us such 
stuff as that !" he burst out. "Tell Billy we don't 
want 'em at any price ! If she has anything worth 



114 How to Write Short Stories 

while to show us we'll be glad to look it over, but 
we're not printing trash for anybody !" 

I'm not claiming that a name counts for noth- 
ing. Of course it does. If a well-known writer 
sends in a good story and a brand-new writer 
sends in one just as good but no better, of course 
the editor will take the one by the well-known 
writer. There are two good reasons ^ for his 
doing so. If he chooses the story by the unknown 
wTiter he must depend entirely upon his own 
judgment, which may not be correct; if he choos- 
es the famous writer he is supported by the 
judgment of a great many other editors and 
thousands of readers. His stronger reason, how- 
ever, is the advertising value of the "big name." 

A club to w^hich I belong has been giving a 
series of musical recitals. We've had Shumann- 
Heink, Gadski, Ysaye, Paderewski. We've had to 
pay each one a thousand dollars or more. But 
we've taken in over two thousand dollars at each 
concert. We didn't have to explain to our fel- 
low-citizens that Shumann-Heink and Gadski 
could sing and Ysaye and Paderewski could play. 
The names were a guarantee that the entertain- 
ments would be worth spending money on. 

A minister told me that while he was in the 
theological seminary he spent his vacation time 
w^orking in a saw factory, and one night the 
employes gathered in a hall and gave an im- 
promptu concert. Among the performers was a 
tenor who sang so pleasingly that the end of his 
part was the signal for vociferous applause. 
When the man did not hasten back to the plat- 



Hoii' to Write Short Stories 115 

form someone, fearing that the next number 
would be given, called, ''Encore! Encore!" 

This did not meet the view of a new employe, 
an Englishman, w^ho rose in his seat and said 
loudly: ''Encore be hanged! Let the same chap 
sing again !" 

Often the editor would like to print a story that 
pleases him and suppress one that personally 
he does not like at all. But he thinks of the 
reader who will scan the cover page of his mag- 
azine in search of the very name he's tempted 
to omit and if that name isn't there buy the other 
editor's magazine. It's the public's rather than 
the editor's fault that "the same chap" is allowed 
to come before the footlights so often. 

After you're near the top, remembering the 
long, hard, what David Graham Phillips called 
the "sweaty" climb, you'll see some fairness in 
the "big name" helping to win acceptances and 
more fame. You won't think it unfair that you 
receive five cents a word when the new writer 
receives only one or fifteen cents when he can't 
get more than three. It would seem to you very 
unjust if any newcomer could snatch your hardly 
won success out of your hand before you'd had 
time even to taste its sweetness. 

Remember for your comfort that all writers 
were new once. It may be true that "poets are 
born and not made," but it is just as true that no 
writer is born famous. I can remember the first 
time I had a book of Barrie's handed me and the 
first time I heard the name Rudyard Kipling. A 
s^reat admirer of Stevenson told me that the first 



116 Hozv to Write Short Stories 

book of Stevenson's he read was Dr. Jekyll and 
Mr. Hyde. He bought the book on a train, while 
coming home after a professional visit out of 
town, and he said that the story made such a 
powerful impression upon him (though the 
name of the author meant nothing to him at that 
time) that he walked up and down the aisle of 
the car to give vent to his agitation. We all have 
the same avenues of approach to the editors and 
to the public as those open to Barrie or Stephen- 
son'or Kipling. If no new writer could succeed 
we English-speaking nations would have but one 
book in our own tongue; we should have noth- 
ing to peruse but the work of the father of our 
literature, the revered Boerwolf. 

Far be it from me to declare the editor in- 
fallible. Being human, it stands to reason that 
his judgment is imperfect. Mr. McClure tells 
us that when Kipling brought his entire output 
to America and offered it to Harper and Brothers 
it was rejected to the last manuscript. But we 
writers oughtn't to feel superior over that bit 
of mis-judgment. Some of us fail to find any- 
thing in Kipling's poems, some of us wonder 
what our parents saw in Jane Austen, and some 
of us, I very much fear, don't read our Shakes- 
peare for pleasure. 

Take what consolation you can in the editor's 
fallibility but don't be angry or spiteful when 
"^he rejects your manuscript. And don't be de- 
spairing. There are a good many editors in the 
literary world and you have reason to expect 



Hoiv to Write Short Stories 117 

that some d^iy one of them will appreciate what- 
ever real merit your work has. 

If the "Big Four" won't buy your manuscripts 
it doesn't follow that they won't sell to the smaller 
fellows, and perhaps the readers of the smaller 
magazines are just as well worth reaching as 
those who subscribe for the Century and Scrib- 
ner's and Harper's and the Atlantic Monthly. If, 
as you claim, your chief reason for writing is that 
you have something to say it should not so 
much matter what sort of a platform you stand 
on or how your hearers are dressed or how much 
remuneration you receive, so long as you can 
gain an audience. 

One of Longfellow's characters says to an- 
other: *'If you find a lady who pleases you very 
much and you want to marry her and she will not 
listen to such a horrid proposition I see but one 
thing for you to do, and that is to find another 
lady who pleases you still more and who will 
listen to it." 

If one editor won't accept your ofifering pro- 
ceed to pay court to another one, your courage 
still up and your heart still whole. 



CHAPTER FIFTEEN 

Criticism 

rriHERE are a great many writers who ask and 
-^ even pay for criticism but comparatively 
few, I have come to fear, who profit appreciably 
by it after it is given. I could devote a pretty 
large volume to anecdotes about writers who 
asked for an honest opinion and then were furi- 
ously angry or deeply hurt when such an opinion 
was forthcoming. 

If you want sympathy seek out some friend 
who always thinks you right and show him your 
manuscript. If you want a sincere expression of 
opinion go to some person, preferably not an 
intimate friend, who is known never to say what 
he does not mean, or pay some professional critic 
with a reputation for honesty to tell you what 
he thinks of your work. Insincere or undeserved 
praise may give you pleasure but it will not help 
you to sell your manuscript. If you cannot bear 
the pain of having your faults pointed out to you 
or are so cocksure of yourself that nothing any 
man can say will alter your opinion of your work 
don't waste money or your friends' time. If 
after all you do not want criticism don't ask for 
it and don't pay for it. Certainly it is not good 
business sense to pay a man for an opinion and 
then be very angry because he has been honest 
enough to risk losing your patronage by giving 
you just what you have paid him for. It is not 



Hozu to Write Short Stories 110 

good common sense to ask an acquaintance to 
tell you what he thinks of your story or article 
or poem and then treat his remarks with con- 
tempt or indifference because they are not all 
praise. 

I believe that almost any expression of opin- 
ion is valuable, providing it is sincere. We are 
not writing for ourselves and what any other per- 
son thinks of our work is perhaps of more import- 
ance than what we ourselves think of it. To see 
ourselves as others will see us is the important 
matter, whether it is a question of a costume or a 
manuscript. Can the average person follow me 
without effort? Does my theme stand out as I 
hoped it would? Will the average reader be 
touched by my pathos or amused by my humor? 
These are questions which may be satisfactorily 
answered by showing your manuscript to any 
honest person, representative of the class of read- 
ers your story or article or poem is intended to 
please. Even though the chosen person is timid 
in expressing an opinion he will unconsciously 
tell you what you ought to know before you have 
talked with him many minutes. 

I once showed a young girl from the country 
a specimen of my typewriting. I had just begun 
to use a typewriter and I rather hungered for 
approbation. The girl looked at my neat sheets, 
evidently trying to think of some appropriate 
and pleasing comment. Then she said enthus- 
iastically, "How lovely and clear your periods 
are." 

Every graduate of a business college will ap- 






120 Hoiv to Write Short Stories 

predate the fact that she had unconsciously 
given me a bit of criticism which I did well to 
heed. If the young w^oman who reads your 
moral uplift story seems especially impressed 
with how well trained your heroine's butler was 
see what you can do toward suppressing the 
butler. 

I once criticised a dainty little sketch about a 
very feminine young person whom a young man 
was taking to his mother for inspection. The 
author wrote us later that our unconscious crit- 
icism had been of more value than that we had 
painstakingly made. He said we evidently 
thought the young man was taking home his 
fiancee, whereas he was really acting as escort 
to a beautiful Angora kitten ! 

If your friend says innocently, ''Well, what 
became of your hero?" when you thought you had 
allowed the young man to die of fatigue on page 
15 you'd better see if page 15 doesn't need re- 
writing. If he fails even to smile at your culmina- 
tion of humor ask yourself if the average reader 
would "see the point." Will your child's story 
hold your little brother or daughter? Or does 
your eager listener grow restless near the middle 
or drop asleep against your knee just as you 
reach your climax ? Does your friend's gardener 
smile over your article on the growing of plums 
which you had thought so interesting and practi- 
cable? 

There are a hundred ways in which a writer 
may obtain a glimpse of his work without asking 
for a definite expression of opinion. Sooner or 



Hoiv to Write Short Stories 121 

later, however, most of us want to hear in so 
many words what some other person thinks of 
our efforts. I want to give a word of warning to 
the writer who is sincerely anxious to know the 
truth : Don't ask an opinion unless you have some 
reason to think it will be worth something to you. 
and don't look upon one person's opinion as 
equivalent to a consensus of opinion from all 
the intelligent readers in your country, and don't 
reject an opinion after it has been conscientiously 
given until you have some definite proof that it 
is worthless. Always be open to suggestions for 
improving your work but cling as to a life- 
preserer to the faith you have in yourself. 

I went to college with the fixed belief that I 
had ability as a writer. I had chosen my pro- 
fession farther back than I could remember, and 
all the teachers I had had in primary, grammar 
and high school had praised my compositions. 
But when I entered college I encountered an 
instructor- who thought my themes very poor 
indeed. No matter what the subject, my care- 
fully written papers elicited only adverse com- 
ments and poor marks. I tried hard to correct 
the defects pointed out to me but apparently I 
made no progress in my instructor's favor. I 
grew confused and^ discouraged. Then I began 
to look into my own case with impartial eyes. 
I remembered that teachers older and with 
apparently quite as wide a knowledge of English 
as my new instructor had praised my work and 
that I had even sold some articles. I resolved to 
trv one of mv themes with that critic before 



122 How to Write Short Stories 

whom my work, if I was to write for publication, 
must all pass, the editor. To my keen delight 
the theme sold. My faith in myself was restored. 

Later I came into contact with Dr. Krapp 
of Columbia University, and his criticisms put 
new life as well as ideas into me. Every adverse 
comment he made seemed just, and every word 
of praise seemed sincere. But suppose I'd allowed 
myself to be discouraged by the first man, tm- 
doubtedly quite as conscientious as Dr. Krapp? 
I'd have given up my one great ambition and 
today I should be working at some uncongenial 
task instead of happily laying down the law to 
those whose aspirations and tastes run side by 
side with my own. 

Let your faith in yourself be built upon a 
common-sense foundation and then consider each 
criticism dispassionately. Have you in your manu- 
script so considered the mistakes pointed out to 
you ? Was your critic right in declaring that you 
had never studied the principles of style? It is 
true that your manuscript cost you only an hour's 
hasty effort, though you had hoped to sell it to 
the Atlantic Monthly or the Century? Was his 
guess that you had just been reading Lcs Miser- 
ahles correct? What should concern you is the 
truth. If you have faults you want to know 
them. If your work has merit you want to un- 
derstand where it lies. Listen to each criticism 
offered you with a mind free from prejudice, 
always yearning to reach your highest possibili- 
ties as a writer and not at all concerned with 
small jealousies and wounds to your pride. If 



Hozv to Write Short Stories 123 

your critic's adverse comments are well-founded 
be grateful for them, make them a part of your 
working knowledge and attack your next manu- 
«^cript better equipped than you were before. 
Test your criticism, not to argue with your 
:ritic or to prove to yourself that you know 
more than he does, but to determine whether or 
not his comments are justified by the defects and 
merits in your manuscript. 

Let me illustrate what I mean by testing 
a criticism. A fellow-critic showed me a letter 
he had received from a courteous patron, asking 
for an explanation. The patron enclosed a very 
correct and . attractive manuscript and said it 
was representative of his work in general; yet 
he had just received a criticism from my col- 
league, stating that one of his manuscripts was 
not correct and inviting. I pondered the letter 
for a moment and then it flashed across my mind 
that in short-hand not and neat look very much 
alike. What the critic had said was, "Your manu- 
script is neat, correct and inviting." The error 
was the stenographer's. 

I once examined a very carefully written and 
readable manuscript and was disappointed to find 
that the ending was wholly lacking in point. 
Apparently the author had the ability to write 
entertainingly but did not know how to reach a 
climax. I wrote as helpful a criticism as I could, 
wondering a little that so intelligent a man as the 
writer seemed to be should have tried to write a 
story with such poor material. In a few days I 
received an apologetic letter, thanking me for 



124 How to Write Short Stories 

having taken so much pains with so unsatis- 
factory a manuscript and explaining that the 
author had neglected to enclose all of the pages. 
As it happened that the last page I examined 
formed a sort of conclusion to the narrative 
I had not guessed that some of the manuscript' 
was missing. 

Both of the writers I have just discussed were 
not only gentlemen but they were sensible. In- 
stead of becoming very indignant at what was 
manifestly unwarranted criticism they compared 
their manuscripts with the letters concerning 
them and so had little difficulty in finding the 
cause of the discrepancy. 

In writing a manuscript that involves knowl- 
edge of some special sort ,of which you have 
only a limited amount a word of criticism is 
often invaluable. A man who has been dean of 
technology in one of our well-known colleges 
told me that frequently a sermon was spoiled for 
him because of some unscientific illustration or 
statement on the part of the preacher. A doctor 
told me that some of the stories he read struck 
him as positively absurd when it came to a scene 
involving an accident or an illness. 

An Episcopalian sister once wrote me, asking 
that I consult her if I wished to describe any- 
thing involving an intimate knowledge of her 
church. "Recently," she wrote, "a Boston news- 
paper described a great Episcopalian service, in 
which 'the acolytes were suspended from the 
ceiling.' I am sure you would never put an 
acolyte in so painful a position but nevertheless 



Hozv to. Write Short Stories 125 

you may make a mistake which would spoil your 
story for an Episcopalian reader if you do not 
first show it to one of us." 

The writer who has a friend willing to glance 
over a paragraph or a scene or a whole article 
or story involving knowledge of some special 
subject will, do well to avail himself of this 
friend's counsel. If we have the spirit of the 
true artist we want our work to be perfect, even 
though the matter we are considering involves 
nothing more vital to our main idea than the 
setting of a bird's leg or the placing of a candle. 

I believe the youngest writer should depend 
upon himself for all the actual work involved 
in producing a manuscript for publication. Plan- 
ning, punctuating, paragraphing, revising and 
even the copying may all well be done by the 
young writer eager to reach his highest possibili- 
ties in the realm of authorship. But the most 
experienced author may profit by criticism. It i 
takes a man with a pretty long neck to get a'^ V^r 
view of himself from all four sides. Criticism 
show^ us our work as others see it, and if we 
receive it with open minds it will free us "frae 
monie a blunder and foolish notion." 



CHAPTER SIXTEEN 

Help from Other Writers 

TF you have not even a foothold on the Hterary 
-^ ladder there is little use in entreating those 
who have to help you up and threatening to pull 
them down by the heels if they won't. The man 
who tries this plan certainly deserves a few ex- 
asperated kicks. 

If I were just starting out the last person I 
would ask to read my manuscript would be the 
successful author who happened to be on my list 
of acquaintances. If a man is writing, not for fun 
but for his living, he usually leaves his desk 
weary of the world of words and sentences, 
figures of speech and imaginary characters. He 
needs a rest just as surely as the man who has 
been working all day with pick and shovel needs 
relief for his tired muscles. If you had a day 
laborer on your list of acquaintances you wouldn't 
think of asking him to spade up your garden for 
you so you could see how he did it or because 
you wanted it spaded up. 

Even if he has plenty of time and strength to 
give you, moreover, the successful author is not 
always a good judge of another author's work. 
Because a man can write it does not follow that 
he is a fair-minded, helpful critic. Personally 
I'd rather know what some intelligent fellow 
without literary aspirations thinks of my article 



How to Write Short Stories 127 

or story than what Marie CorelH or Rudyard 
KipHng might have to say about it. 

How, then, are we to profit by the vast fund 
of experience and information which the suc- 
cessful writer has gained? By reading his printed 
works. Between the Hues of many a novel lies 
a whole text-book on authorship for the eager 
young writer's perusal. 

Take Barrie's "\M'ien a Man's Single." The 
book is so full of suggestions for the journalist 
that Barrie might have written it on purpose for 
him. It makes the discouraged writer laugh 
a good, wholesome laugh at himself ; it reveals 
to him that he is "not the only pebble" that has 
dropped prone and despairing on the beach; and 
it tells in very plain language what sort of effort 
has met with success. If the book is closed with- 
out leaving a mind eager to express itself in a 
new manuscript the reader may be a story-teller 
or a poet but I take no odds on his chances as 
a journalist. 

Most of us slip off our shoes in the presence 
of Margaret Ogilvie, but it is to her that Barrie 
opens his heart. The book tells of his first 
attempts, of struggles and failures and success. 
There is a warm, soft light that shines from the 
heart of the sympathetic writer. It falls on com- 
mon things and makes them beautiful. This is 
the secret which Barrie has revealed in Margaret 
Ogilvie. 

Tommy and Grizcl utters some very definite 
advice to the writer, either young or practised. 
Indeed, Barrie has been so generous with bits 



128 Hozv to Write Short Stories 

of information, suggestion and experience deal- 
ing with the profession of authorship that I have 
sometimes wondered if he has not purposely 
scattered these white scraps along his path that 
other writers may the more easily follow him to 
the coveted goal. 

A Modern Instance gives us a talk with 
Howells. It shows where an energetic, open- 
eyed man may find "copy." It. shows that there 
is always room for such a man, even among a 
crowd of experienced journalists. And it teaches 
very clearly the importance of an honest policy. 
Moral obligations, Howells assures us, are facts 
which it is not safe for the writer to ignore. 

Black's Shandon Bells is another book for 
the new writer. The first half, at least, is a 
direct message from a man who has known defeat 
and, again, success. It may be improbable and 
disappointing as a novel, but as a text-book for 
the new writer Shandon Bells is not to be over- 
looked. 

George MandeviUe's Husband, a book that 
most people have forgotten, has a word for the 
woman writer. It is not a remarkable book but 
it is well worth the would-be author's attention. 
George Mandeville succeeds but, succeeding, 
brings reproach upon her profession. Better not 
to write than neglect the work God has given 
you to do, is the advice one finds in George Man- 
deviUe's Husband. 

In striking contrast to George Maiideville's 
Husband is Kavanagh, a book of prose poetry to 
most of us and no more. The sin of yielding to 



Hoi^' to Write Short Stories 129 

natural laziness, to the weakening influences of 
present environment; this is the text of Long- 
fellow's sermon. As the character who illustrates 
the sermon is a man who goes on teaching after 
it is quite plain that he ought to be writing the 
book has an important place on my list. Kavanagh 
should have something to say, if to a very small 
audience. 

I have given only a very few of the books con- 
taining valuable hints and information for the 
new writer. It is so natural to want to write 
one's own experiences that almost every famous 
writer has dropped suggestions into his stories 
which the beginner may ponder to his lasting 
profit. How did he begin? How did she first 
get into print? How did they know they had 
talent ? These are natural questions. The answers 
are to be found in print rather than in inter- 
views or personal letters. 

I found a great deal to interest me in Mr. 
McClure's Autobiography beside the pleasing 
anecdotes and discussions of great men and 
women. Why did Mr. McClure succeed with a 
series of articles on cooking? Not because, like 
most husbands, he had theories as to how bread 
and pie and cake should be made, but because he 
had studied the work of the cook at the Astor 
House and received valuable information and 
suggestions from him. There are other auto- 
biographies beside Mr. McClure's. Maybe in 
some of them you can find answers to all the 
questions you would ask "if only" you could 



130 Hozv to Write Short Stories 

secure a personal interview with the writers 
whose success you covet. 

We need not "pester" our Hterary friends with 
questions as to how to begin and how to find 
material and how to w^in recognition when so 
many valuable books beside those under "Books 
on Authorship" lie ready for our perusal. If 
wx are business-like in our attitude toward .our 
work we will not ask another man to "stock us 
up," supply us with advertising ideas, to send us 
customers. We may study his methods carefully 
but we will not appeal directly to him. 

A bright woman relative of mine has for her 
motto : "W' hat man has done woman can do." 
And I have often watched her demonstrate that 
what one man has done one woman can do quite 
as well. As we use the hints the old writers give 
us let us cheer ourselves with the thought that 
what the other fellow has done cannot be im- 
possible. 



CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 

When You re Tempted to Shut Up Shop 

^^^F all the adverse conditions that the writer 
^-^ has to contend with I think the most terrible 
is the black discouragement which is pretty sure 
to grip him after repeated rejections of a manu- 
script about which he had felt particularly hope- 
ful. I have in mind now, not the author who is 
failing because his work is poor, but the con- 
scientious and talented writer who is doing his 
level best and whose best is good ; the high-grade 
writer who will succeed some day but whose 
courage is failing because success is so long 
deferred. 

I believe if we could talk to all the great 
authors, those w^ho have won real successes, 
each would tell us that he w^as grateful, for his 
failures. The beginner who sells all he writes is 
usually tempted into writing what is not worth 
reading. The author who is goaded on by failures 
is the one whose standard rises and whose suc- 
cess, when won, is lasting. 

More than one high-salaried stenographer has 
told me that she owed her success to a difficult 
first position. Because she had to exert all her 
powers to fill her first position she gained a speed 
and accuracy and self-reliance that set her a 
high personal standard and that won her con- 
tinued success. The writer who sells his hastilv 



132 Hozv to Write Short Stories 

written manuscript for a fair price is usually 
content to go on producing hastily written manu- 
scripts, while the writer who can sell only the re- 
sults of long and careful effort acquires the 
habit of good work and in the end outstrips his 
more speedy rival. 

Some years ago I found among the books 
chosen for me to while away an enforced vacation 
one by a new author. I glanced languidly at the 
first paragraph and then lost myself. I finished the 
book very early in the morning of the next day. 
When I returned to the city I procured all the 
other books this author had written. There were 
only two ; each was up to the standard of the 
first book. A year or so later I again found op- 
portunity for some light reading and, seeing on a 
newsstand a paper-covered book which bore my 
author's name, I hastily purchased it, though I 
did not remember having heard the title men- 
tioned. I had to force myself to read the story 
through. 

The first books were carefully planned and 
executed. They were full of thoughtful sen- 
tences, odd, attractive conceits and forceful inter- 
pretations of character. Each seemed finished, 
though it was early work. In none of the three 
had the author depended upon natural ability to 
see her safely through. The last book was care- 
lessly thrown together, yet it seemed laborious. 
It was unconvincing in plot and in characteriza- 
tion. As I read I ceased to wonder that while 
a few years ago the author's name was on every 
tongue, it was now no longer mentioned. A few 



Hoiv to Write Short Stories 133 

successes, one after another, had made the writer 
beHeve that she could sell all she wrote and she 
had promptly ceased to give only her best thought 
to her stories. Except for her first three books 
she will rank among the failures, despite the fact 
that she has unusual natural talent. 

It is a recognized law that growth comes with 
effort. We raise heavy weights and develop our 
muscles. We climb hills and our circulation 
quickens. 'We are all well aware that if we spent 
our youth being trundled about in baby-carriages 
we should never have the strength of men and 
women. We need to be buffeted, to find our 
profession hard in order to develop the strength 
which expresses itself in worthy stories and 
articles and poems. Brow^ning's stirring lines 
seem to be peculiarly adapted to the discouraged, 
storm-tossed writer : 

"Then welcome each rebuff 
That turns earth's smoothness rough, 
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go !" 

Longfellow has a character say : "It has done 
me good to be parched by the sun and drenched 
by the dews of life." 

It is only the man who gives up the struggle 
who does not learn to be glad that he w^as called 
upon to suffer it. The writer who responds to 
Browning's "Go !" though with sore feet and 
aching back will live to be glad with Browning 
and Longfellow that a part of the way at least 
was rough and toilsome. 

Even when he is succeeding or when he is able 
to take his failures philosophically the writer is 



134 HoTv to Write Short Stories 

usually prone to periods of dark discouragement. 
Long after the world had begun to recognize 
Stevenson as a genius he described himself in 
a letter to a friend as having "the black dog hard 
after" him. I'm afraid there's no doubt that 
days of depression, generally following days of 
high courage and exalted hopes, are natural to 
the author as they are to other artists. More- 
over, it seems that from the great Master down 
no man has been able to accomplish a special 
task for mankind without his moment of hope- 
lessness and a bitter sense of failure. The law 
of compensation seems to demand that he who 
is to know unusual joy, such as comes from hav- 
ing given birth to something strong and beautiful, 
must also suffer unusual pain. 

Let the writer on whom life seems -to have 
been unnecessarily hard and who envies his 
neighbor's smooth existence remember that one 
must suffer in order to understand and portray 
and be of service. All that the waiter suffers 
bravely, whether physical pain or personal loss 
or the grievous disappointment of seeming fail- 
ure with his work, goes to the making up of the 
strong character which alone is fit to guide and 
support and succor others. 

But you want to succeed ! Surely you do. And 
the higher and more worthy your endeavor the 
more it behooves you to desire to succeed. The 
man who has given his best thought and his best 
work in ten manuscripts and received them all 
back without a word of editorial encouragement 
may be forgiven for crying out with another 



Hozv to Write Short Stories 13-5 

poor man, ''Oh, Lord, try me with a Httle 
success !" 

A\>iting for pubHcation is a business : we must 
never forget that in admitting and caring for the 
artistic side of our natures and our work. Take 
out the manuscript which seemed to you particu- 
larly promising and look at it with your business 
sense keenly awake. Is the title attractive, the 
sort of title that would make any reader, even an 
editor, eager to see what suggested it? Is the in- 
troduction, crisp and clear, pleasing enough to 
carry on what the title began and entice the 
reader into the body of the story? In other 
words, do your title and introduction suggest 
how really good your manuscript is? 

How about * your copy ? Does it still look 
fresh and clean or does it indicate that it has been 
travelling about from editor to editor? 

What about your list of markets? Do you 
know the magazines to which you have been 
sending your manuscripts? Are you sure the 
last one you tried uses stories as long as yours or 
any poems or articles of the type yours is? 

Examine your manuscript just as though it 
were not yours but that of an unknown contrib- 
utor to your magazine, the magazine which you 
were so eager to see succeed. If your manuscript 
is just as good as you can make it in every way 
and your list seems to you the best you could 
use, go on sending your contribution out. Put 
it into a fresh envelope with another brief, cour- 
teous note and then mail it and "forget it," and, 



136 How to Write Short Stories 

having forgotten it, begin a new manuscript with 
fresh interest and fresh courage. 

Don't think you must rewrite your manuscript 
every time it comes back. There is such a thing 
as putting too much work on a manuscript. Don't 
pohsh your story or article or poem until you 
rub off all its freshness and naturalness. Some 
authors write and rewrite a composition until 
they lose their power to see it correctly and also 
their power to produce anything else. Don't 
spend so much time trying to discover why one 
manuscript has not sold that you have only one 
manuscript to dispose of. 

The Preacher says : "In the morning sow thy 
seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand : 
for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, 
either this or that, or whether they both shall be 
alike good." Perhaps you have been trying a 
class of work which is not just fitted to your 
natural powers. You may have a keen sense of 
humor and still be able to write far better serious 
stories than humorous ones. You may like to 
write poetry and still do better work in the line 
of prose. Perhaps you have been writing books 
when you have had material only for short 
stories or your experience has not yet warranted 
you in attempting long fiction. If you have failed 
with one class of writing try something a bit 
different. Because you have had only barren 
results in one field it does not follow that another 
will not yield you a plentiful harvest. 

Do not give up your dearest hopes because 
they are not realized easily, because success can- 



» 



//ozc- to Write Short Stories leST 



not be won by a few spasmodic, if vigorous, 
efforts. When discouragement seizes you meet 

tit with such high spirit and withal sifch intelh- 
gence that you will be all the stronger and better 
for having had to grapple with it. 

To revert once more to my figure : Don't put 
up your shutter^ because the public has not yet 
become aware that you have opened a shop. 
Polish your windows, rearrange your wares and 
add some fresh, attractive goods to your stock. 
Your'e in business to succeed. If you know 
what you have to ofifer is better than anything the 
man on the next block has to sell it would be 
wrong as well as foolish of you to let him put you 
out of business or get the greater part of the 
trade. 



CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 

The Business of Writing — A Summing Up 

TN 1910 the Associated Sunday Magazines and 
-^ the Delineator offered prizes for short stories. 
The sums were large enough to tempt the famous 
writers and to dazzle the minds of people with 
''a knack for writing" but who had never suc- 
ceeded in selling a story. As it was my business 
to criticise manuscripts I was given a first reading 
of many of the stories to be entered for these 
prizes, and the experience made me wish harder 
than ever that I could persuade the new writers to 
look at their chosen profession in a business-like 
way. 

$2500 is a good deal of money; and so is 
$2,000; and so is $300 a good deal of money. 
It is a generally accepted truth that nobody wants 
to pay something for nothing. It looks very 
much, then, as though to secure a $2500 prize 
in a short story contest one would have to write 
a $2500 short story. It will also no doubt hold 
good that if one is to win a $300 prize one must 
write a $300 story. 

Soon after the announcements were made I 
examined in the same day three stories, intended 
for entry in one or the other of these contests. 
The author of the first had devoted perhaps three 
hours to composing and copying her story. She 
was apparently an educated woman, and there 
were no grammatical errors or defects of style. 
But in more than one instance words necessary 
to the sense had been omitted. The writer had ' 



Hozc to Write Short Stories 13:) 

not given her copy as careful thought as a courte- 
ous business man gives his brief note, requesting 
or dechning an interview. Yet she hoped to 
receive between $300 and $2,500 for her manu- 
script. 

Another writer had carefully revised his w^ork, 
but he had action that savored of the 15th century 
and a 20th century setting, and he had a legal 
discrepancy which would have attracted the 
notice of a bright lad of fifteen. Yet his letter 
stated that he was determined to win in a contest 
for $2500. 

Another writer had a story built upon the firm 
foundation of one of Victor Hugo's situations. 
His style was not so strong as the plot. But he 
said he meant to submit his manuscript in a con- 
test for $2500. 

The contributors who fail to win, not only 
prizes of large sums of money but even accept- 
ances may, usually, attribute their disappoint- 
ments to one of two causes : either they have 
nothing to say or they do not know how to 
express themselves. The first class seems hope- 
less. Of the second class some fail simply be- 
cause of lack of early training. They have 
thoughts well worth passing on, but their work 
is crude, unpleasing in its general eft'ect. They 
cannot punctuate or paragraph a story. Quota- 
tion marks puzzle them. They do not, of course, 
understand the construction of a story. These 
with patience and hard work can overcome every 
one of the obstacles in the w^ay of their desire. 
Those with the early training need practice; just 
constant, steady, intelligent work. 



140 Hoiv to Write Short Stories 

Some writers fail through lack of confidence. 
It is an excellent thing- to invite criticism ; it is 
a very foolish thing to let a bit of adverse com- 
ment destroy your confidence in your carefully 
planned and executed story. Again and again I 
am asked : "Do you think I shall ever make a 
writer ?" And sometimes my correspondent adds : 
"If you say my manuscript shows no talent I will 
never write another story." Xow what critic is 
infallible? I wonder what boss carpenter in the 
country could convince the young fellow repairing 
window ledges across the court that his joinings 
are bad ! The man evidently knows his trade 
and he's working away and whistling as though 
failure were an impossibility. He knows he's 
worth his six dollars a day. 

Some years ago I examined a story depicting 
a happy-hearted Swedish girl. As my Swedish 
acquaintance was limited to one serious old man 
and a hard-working young mother I wondered 
if the author had drawn her girl from life, and I 
asked her if she was familiar with the Swedish 
characteristics. I meant merely to put her on 
her guard in case she had been giving too free 
rein to her imagination. The Editor had been 
offering small prizes to the persons sending in the 
three best stories during a month, and the 
Swedish story won a prize. In acknowledging 
our letter the author said she had been astonished 
at her success, as she had been completely dis- 
couraged by our question. She said she had 
been brought up with Swedish children and had 
been more or less closely connected with Swedes 



I 



Hozv to Write Short Stories 141 

all her life. She added that she had intended to 
put her story away and not submit it to any 
publication. Imagine a tinsmith discarding his 
"job" because some fellow mechanic asked him 
if he was sure galvanized iron leaders were better 
than tin ! 

Some writers fail through over-confidence. 
They will not learn by other waiters' failures and 
successes. They believe that rules are for plod- 
ders, not- for the talented folks. They feel that 
the editors are in league against them and that 
there is nothing to be gained by raising the 
standard of their work. One of these stepped 
into my office one day and offered me a 
printed sheet. He said it contained a poem of his 
and the price was fifteen cents. A member of our 
office force asked him why he did not send his 
poem to the magazines. 

"The magazines !" exclaimed the man indig- 
nantly. "No magazine will take a manuscript 
from an unknown writer !" 

We were tempted into citing, instances of 
writers who without any influence whatever had 
sold stories or poems to good magazines. 'T 
sold a story for $60 when not an editor in the 
country had ever heard my name mentioned," 
declared one woman. 

The author seemed half-convinced. Then he 
burst out excitedly : "But I have a poem here 
which no editor will touch ! I sent it to all the 
good magazines and they returned it. And yet 
when I gave it to a young lady friend to read 
she said, 'Oh, how sweet !' " He looked at us 
triumphantly. "And I couldn't sell it!" 



142 Hozv to Write Short Stories 

He waited, evidently expecting that one of Ub 
would buy the poem on the young lady's recom- 
mendation, but no one cared to risk the fifteen 
cents. 

The man appeared to be a gentleman. He was 
well-dressed and cultured in his manner. He 
was certainly a man of some education. Yet he 
was willing to take the opinion of this one young 
girl who thought his poem sweet against that of 
the editors of the best magazines in the country. 

Another of these over-confident writers with 
a grudge against the editors once wrote me a 
letter, explaining his views. He said he couldn't 
sell his manuscripts, but he had a much better in- 
come than the editors who rejected his offerings 
and he could afiford to regard their unjust de- 
cisions with complacency. Now what has my 
correspondent's income as a manufacturer to do 
with the merit of his story or the judgment of 
the editors? Because a man can produce a $100 
typewriter it doesn't follow that he can write a 
$100 story. I suspect that my author sent his 
manuscript to a certain magazine because he 
wanted to see his story under his name on that 
magazine's pages ; the question of whether his 
story would increase the value of the magazine 
did not so much concern him. I wonder if he'd 
let the editor work on his typewriters because the 
man liked the smell of a machine shop or wanted 
to boast to his friends that he could "hold down 
a job" as a mechanic! 

This resentment against the editors seems al- 
most fatal. And it's unjust. At the beginning of 



Hoiij to Write Short Stories 143 

my business life I worked in an editorial office, 
and one of my duties was sending back rejected 
manuscripts. There was a contest going on, my 
particular editor having offered $200 for a short 
sketch discussing some clever way out of a dif- 
ficulty that had seemed to the writer hopeless. 
I ventured to enter the contest and I did hope 
my manuscript would win an acceptance if not 
a prize. Of course I signed a fictitious name. 
To my joy my sketch was held over for a second 
reading. Then one day I found it in a drawer 
usually given up to condemned manuscripts. 
There was just a shadow of doubt as to the 
editor's intention, and I gave myself the benefit 
of it. Picking up my own manuscript I asked 
timidly, ''Are these to be sent back?" 

The editor glanced at his mark on my envelope 
and then ran over the first page of the story. 
A half-tender smile flashed across hi§ lean face. 
"Yes," he said; "it was a bright Httle sketch too !" 

After that when I wrote more pretentious 
things and they came back I used to comfort my- 
self by conjuring up visions of the editors smiling 
tenderly at my manuscripts before they rejected 
them. 

I was ones in an office with a woman who 
would make the most scathing criticisms of her 
helpers. When one of them grew indignant or 
burst into sore-hearted weeping she would hasten 
to assure the girl that she entertained the kindliest 
feelings toward her and chide her gently for 
taking the fault-finding as "a personal matter." 
It grew to be a standing joke in the office that 



144 Hozv to Write Short Stories 

no trouble need cause one pain if it were only 
not looked upon as "a personal matter." But our 
lady employer was correct in her reasoning if 
not very tactful in her methods. A craftsman 
should never resent just criticism of his work. If 
the authors would remember that the rejection of 
a manuscript is never a personal matter with the 
edtior they would suffer less and learn more 
from their rejections. 

I like the writers who can pick themselves up 
after a tumble and go pluckily on, perhaps laugh- 
ing a bit at the spectacle they may have made. A 
fellow-critic once told a patron that he would be 
glad to know her story would never appear in 
print. I did not read the manuscript, but I im- 
agine it was a little off-color or else unduly 
depressing in its teachings. Not long afterwards 
I was opening the mail when a small envelope 
dropped from a letter. On it in Latin were the 
words, "Rest in Peace." I attached no importance 
to the inscription and opened the envelope, ex- 
pecting to find a stamp. Instead some fine grey 
ashes dropped into my lap. Then I read the 
accompanying letter. The writer said that she 
had wished to set her critic's mind at rest and 
so had cremated her manuscript and sent him the 
remains. 

Another man sent us a story entitled, "J^st 
As I Am." After reading our adverse criticism 
he sent in some more stories with this comment : 
'T have changed the title of my first manuscript 
to 'Ji-^st As I Ain't,' and it has now gone to 
accelerate the speed of the kitchen fire." 



How to Write Short Stories 145 

\\'hen I find an author who is glad to be shown 
his defects but w:ho declares that no amount of 
adverse criticism can induce him to stop trying 
I have a deep respect for him. He has in him 
two elements of success. It seems to me a wTiter 
should so love his work that he would go on 
writing if he knew that his literary efforts would 
never bring him a word of praise or a cent of 
money. But it is this very love that has meant 
success. I do not wonder at the holding power 
of Stevenson's stories when I think of his, ''I 
would refuse the gift of life without my art." 

If you have nothing to say give up the idea of 
the prize — and the acceptance. If you have 
something to say do not be held back by such 
surmountable obstacles as punctuation, para- 
graphjng, construction and the principles of 
style. But remember that slovenly, amateurish 
work cannot win a prize or an acceptance away 
from persons who think no detail too small to 
be considered and who are bending every care- 
fully trained power toward defeating you. 

Writing for publication is a business. It's not 
a perfectly easy matter to succeed in business, 
and yet be handicapped by what the practical man 
kindly calls ''the artistic temperament." Yet 
without the artistic temperament — the power to 
dream, the quick imagination, the keen sympathy 
and sensibility of the artist — it is hardly possible 
to produce the sort of writing which we dignify 
by the name of literature. The w^riter with good 
common sense, therefore, will try to maintain a 
balance between his business intelligence and his 



146 Hozv to Write Short Stories 

artistic nature. He must not be so bent upon 
sales that the artist in him is dwarfed or 
thwarted ; he must not be so completely the artist 
that he loses his business sense. 

The best I have, but a best produced with a 
view to meeting the market : this should be the 
writer's guiding principle in the business of writ- 
ing for publication. 

Don't quarrel with the editors. You can't 
get along without them unless you are willing to 
adopt the plan of the man with the "sweet" poem. 

You remember how Mi's. Crupp used to com- 
fort David Copperfield by saying : "Cheer up, 
Mr. Copperf ull ! I'm a mother myself." The 
editor has a fellow feeling for you, whether you 
know it or not. Very often he's submitting manu- 
scripts to other editors in the regular way ; and he 
doesn't always get checks in return for them 
either. Cheer up ! He's a writer himself. 

Let us give the loved little shop a fresh coat 
of paint and buy some new fixtures and see that 
the good outdoor air and the sunlight can get 
in. Let us study our competitor's window and 
the new catalogues , and find out what's "doing" 
in the business world of which we are a part. 

Of course we're going to succeed eventually, 
but there's no use delaying the day by loafing 
and moaning. Let's not fail for lack of trying 
any way. And, listen! The customers won't be 
scared away by seeing the hght of courage on our 
face and hearing us whistling joyously as we 
work. 



Manuscript Paper and Envelopes 

For Writers of Photoplays, 
Short Stories, Poems, Etc. 




It is not at all required that students of our books buy the 
necessary manuscript paper and envelopes from us. It can be 
purchased at any prominent stationery store. Paper weighs 
heavily and we must charge for postage, packing, etc. However, 
we keep a large stock on hand for the convenience of hundreds 
of writers who prefer to order their supplies from us, and will 
mail on same day order is received the following set of stationery, 
which is the kind used in all literary work: 

75 Sheets of Manuscript Paper, 8^4 x 11 inches. 

75 Second Sheets for making extra copy of manuscript. 

25 Manila Envelopes, 4^ x 9}^ inches, in which to mail 
manuscripts. 

25 Manila Envelopes, 4x9 inches, which you are to self- 
address and enclose with manuscript for its return if rejected. 

2 Sheets of Carbon Paper. 

Price of above complete set, postpaid, ^1.50. 

NOTE — No orders for stationery accepted for less quantity 
than the $1.50 set. 



THE WRITER'S DIGEST 

Butler Building Cincinnati, Ohio 



The Writer's Market 

WHERE TO SELL SHORT STORIES, SERIALS, 
POEMS, ETC. 



THE 
WRITER'S 
MARKET 



''IftV:;:! 



This little book contains the names and addresses of ovei 
one hundred publishers in the market for short stories, serials, 
book manuscripts, novelettes, poems, special articles on various 
subjects and photographs. It also specifies the KIND of ma- 
terial each publisher wants. Many of these publishers are con- 
stantly buying from amateur writers for the very good reason 
that they cannot afford to pay the exorbitant prices demanded by 
the prominent authors. There is a market awaiting every 
manuscript if it bears rrierit; but there are dozens of these 
smaller publications unknown to the average writer, and until he 
does know the ones wanting his particular style of work, he is 
powerless to proceed; he has reached the stumbling-block on his 
road to success. He may have written a story of excellent 
merit, he may have composed a very clever poem, he may have 
toiled through the long hours of the night in preparing a book- 
manuscript. There may be a style and finish to his work of wide 
public appeal, but unless he can dispose of it profitably after 
his many days of labor, his work amounts to nothing. 
Handsomely bound in cloth. Price, postpaid, $1.00. 



THE WRITER'S DIGEST 

Butler Building Cincinnati, Ohio 




Just What You Have Been Looking For 

A Monthly Magazine of Valuable Infor- 
mation for Every Ambitious Writer !S m 

Whether your ambition is to write and sell photoplays, 
short stories, poems, popular songs, magazine and news- 
paper articles or any other kind of manuscripts THE 
WRITER'S DIGEST will be an invaluable help to you. 

Successful Authors, Critics and Authorities on English 
Literature impart to you through the pages of THE 
WRITER'S DIGEST knowledge gained through years of 
hard work, experience and research. Their articles abound 
with invaluable, helpful and instructive information that 
you NEED and MUST know to succeed. The informa- 
tion is timely, up-to-the-minute and of a nature not readily 
found in text books. 

You Need THE WRITERS DIGEST 
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THE VS^RITER'S DIGEST 
Butler Building -:- Cincinnati, Ohio 



Thesaurus of English Words and 
Phrases 

BY PETER MARK ROGET. 

This is a book that 
everybody needs. It is 
just as indispensable to 
every home as a dic- 
tionary, and certainly no 
author can afford to be 
without it. The purpose 
of a dictionary is merely 
to explain the meaning of 
words, the word being 
given to find the idea it 
is intended to convey. 
The object of the THE- 
SAURUS is exactly the 
opposite of this; the idea 
being given, to find 'the 
word or phrase by which 
that idea may be most 
fitly and aptly expressed. 
As one has well said: "It 
gives you the word or 
phrase you want when 
that word or phrase is on 
the tip of your tongue but 
altogether beyond your 
reach." 

Let us illustrate its 
use: Suppose that in our 
story we write, "John 
faced the men unflinch- 
ingly and spoke to them 
in words of decision. His 
meaning was clear . . ." 
We stop. The word "clear" is not just the word we want to" use. 
We open our THESAURUS and turn to the word''clear.' There 
we find "intelligible, lucid, explicit, expressive, significant, dis- 
tinct, precise, definite, well-defined, perspicuous, transpicuous, 
plain, obvious, manifest, palpable, striking, glaring, transparent, 
aboveboard, unshaded, recognizable, unambiguous, unequivocal, 
unmistakable, legible, open, positive, unconfused, graphic." See 
what a field of expression we have at our command. The 
synonyms of every word and expression are given in this manner. 

How many times have you said, "I know just what I want 
to say if I could only think of the proper words to express my 
ideas?" The above book is the key to this problem. It matters 
not whether you are writing a photoplay, short story, poem, social 
or business letter, this volume will prove a real friend. It i,5 
regarded by our most distinguishable scholars as indispensable 
for daily use — as valuable as a dictionary. 

Handsomely bound in cloth, 671 pages. Price, postpaid, $3.50. 




LBD78 



THE WRITER'S DIGEST 
Butler Building . Cincinnati, Ohio 

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